


Do You Know

by betp



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety, Depression, Established Relationship, Kidfic, M/M, Marital Conflict, Mental Health Issues, Mpreg, Panic Attacks, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2017-11-27 09:37:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 106,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/660439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betp/pseuds/betp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Derek is a hundred percent sure his parents never mentioned this, but then again, he never did pay much attention to stupid shit. An ongoing series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. derek and stiles make a baby

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> File name: sigh mpreg fluffbarf.docx  
> Stiles is twenty-two or twenty-three. He's been seeing Derek for a while. Things are serious. (As serious as they get, anyway.) Lydia and Jackson are engaged again; no one thinks it will last, not even Lydia.

It starts with cuddling.

Not in the way that the cuddling led to sex, which is what led to—

No, in the way that Derek's first alerted to it when Stiles starts absently taking Derek's hand and putting it onto his stomach. When they are cuddling. Specifically, spooning. In bed, or on a couch. One time, dozing off in the bed of a stranger's pickup truck. They just—sometimes when they were, this happens. Sometimes. Stiles just reaches over, grabs his hand, and drags it over. Presses the palm into his abdomen. Hums his contentment, kind of snuggles in closer to Derek.

Which—as tactile as Stiles is, Derek is _more_ so, and Derek's usually the one clambering (subtlety's never been Derek's forte) for physical contact. And it's such a specific request: _put your hand exactly here_. So Derek's either concerned or just curious.

"It just _feels_ nice, okay?" Stiles tells him somewhat defensively when Derek looks at him funny about it. " _God,_ you can't let me have _anything_ , can you?"

He's such a _dick_. Derek's into it.

And at first it was just the once. Stiles seemed insecure, wanted Derek touching him. Derek guesses he can get behind that, so—so to speak. It's no _hardship_ touching Stiles.

But after the third or fourth time it happened, he asked. Made sure his tone was clear of judgment, strictly curious, pure concern. Stiles squirms, holds on to Derek's relocated hand with both of his own. "It just. It feels _right_ ," he says drowsily, slowly. Scowling a little at having to explain himself. "It feels _correct_. Until you asked about it, then I felt right _and wrong_." That's confusing. In response to that, Derek puts both hands on Stiles' stomach and settles in to sleep and say nothing else about it. Which Stiles seems to appreciate. "Get off my case," he adds in a mumble.

But then Derek starts noticing the smell.

That sounds bad, but it wasn't. It was the _opposite_ of bad, really. Stiles' scent is already Derek's favorite smell—like sugar and flour, titanium dioxide, like amusement and lobeira, an inexplicable something like vinegar. Probably energy drinks, probably down feathers, probably—jesus, like love. And then there's— _more_.

That's the smell Derek gets, is this sweet _extra_ ness of Stiles. Like a second helping, like more to come. A little bit like Derek, too—honey and singed wood, mostly. Some additional blood and some hunger, and the scent is _enthralling_. It's like when he and Stiles first started having sex, the smell of Stiles full of, dripping with, covered in Derek's come ("God _damn_ , you came _straight_ into my eye.") made Derek positively drunk with happiness ("Well, close your eye next time. _Ow_ "). That's what this is, only totally removed from sex and placed into this completely new category of—something eerily similar to elation. Something is different. Not wrong, necessarily, Derek doesn't think. It's just... 

He's sitting at their kitchen table, which at this point is a big-ass crate with a circle of glass glued to it, watching Stiles cram buttered waffles down his throat like a starving dog, and smelling this newfound additional saccharinity, and feeling his heart start to pound in his ears, when he realizes he lent his texts to Deaton.

Deaton furrows his brow, as he is wont to do, when he finally beats it out of Derek why he needs the books back. And if Derek's honest with himself, he wanted to tell somebody. Deaton thinks, hums thoughtfully. Then he strolls distractedly into his office. When he emerges, Derek's books in his hands, he smiles and says, "Here they are. Just as you left them."

Derek takes them, feeling oddly incomplete. "Thank you," he adds belatedly, and shuffles trough them, in search of _Strange Practifes of The Wolfes & Nature_. He's read the thing twice before, and knows it doesn't have anything applicable to his situation—nor is it a reliable source in the first place—but he's hoping there's something he missed in the past because he wasn't looking for it, some theory, any wisp of a rumor that can confirm what's going on. He becomes slowly aware that Dr. Deaton is watching him thoughtfully. "What," he says.

Deaton answers, "Tell Stiles to come here."

"What?"

"I'd like to test him for it. I can't leave, because I'm waiting for someone to bring in a maine coone for a spay, so send him here."

To the _vet_? Stiles will _hate_ that. _Derek_ hates that. If Deaton's gonna interfere with all their personal issues, why can't he open up a goddamn private office? One void of parrots? "No. For what?" Derek asks. A dog barks when Derek speaks, making him wince—he _hates_ dogs. All dogs should be relocated to Canada, where Derek will never go.

Deaton full-out grins. Almost pityingly, but probably something else. "Do you really not know the answer to that, Derek? Surely you've smelled this before."

Derek recalls and then represses a memory of his aunt, pulling his uncle's hand and placing it onto her belly. "That's not," Derek begins firmly over the sound of two dogs barking. A directed terror is whirring into his limbs, his chest. "It's different." There is a long pause (full of noise). "Isn't it?"

Deaton pauses for a long minute, swallows, considers his words. "Tell Stiles to come here," he says again gently. "If it makes you feel any better—and it might Stiles—go get a test from the store."

"Just—" Derek's knees almost give out, so he sits in a chair. There's a stack of paper on it that crinkles under him, but he doesn't care. "Just a test, a normal—a normal test." Before Deaton can answer, Derek stands up again, wide-eyed, and runs out the door. Dogs bark emphatically as he rushes past them.

::

When he gets back, Stiles is sitting on Deaton's little metal examination table and looking deeply disgruntled. He's holding an ice pack to his head. "Derek," he says accusingly when Derek walks in.

Derek drops the bag in his hand—it hits the floor with a _thok_ —and ends up pressed against Stiles' knees like driftwood. He looks at him much closer than Stiles would have found comfortable at the beginning of their relationship. Now, he seems like he's almost grudgingly soothed by it.  

"You never told me this could happen," Stiles says, and then he adds, "Asshole," for good measure. He lowers the ice pack, holds it idly in his lap. "You'd think this would be _front page news_. Okay? The _public needs to know_."

"I didn't _know_ it could happen. I don't know _how_ it happened, this doesn't make any goddamn—" Derek pauses, a little frantic. "Unless," He peers into Stiles' eyes. " _you're_ not—?"

" _No_! You moron," Stiles snaps, deeply angry. "That's not even the same _orifice_ , you fucking—" Derek scrubs a palm on his own face. He hears Laura's lilting voice, _This is why we think before we speak_. Fuck _off_ , Laura. Jesus. "I would _assume_ it's because of werewolf stuff. You goddamn _donut_." But Stiles snags clawlike fingers in Derek's shirt, keeping him close. "I fainted," he tells him confidentially. "You know? I freaked out, and then I fainted."

A little olive branch. _Don't beat yourself up, champ; there's a learning curve for both of us._ Tentatively, Derek puts his hand on Stiles' head, where there is indeed a small bump. Like a little welt; the kind of lump an idiot would get after falling off an examination table he didn't even need to be sitting on. "Do you think you…" Derek pushes his other hand under Stiles' t-shirt, flush against his naked stomach. Stiles sighs under his touch. "I mean, do you want…"

Stiles kisses him—quick, because it smells like rabbit shit and ammonia in here. "To keep it? Yes," he tells him. "I mean, I can't imagine how I would—not that I—yes." He belatedly reaches a hand up to scritch Derek's scalp.

Derek scowls and backs away, because Derek's life is going to change and he needs to be _ready_ for it. There needs to be hammering and sawing in his house, and furniture, and money needs to be moved around, from one place to a different place. He needs distance, to grasp all this, to shift from one mindset to the next. Derek doesn't have the faintest idea what, specifically, he will do to prepare for this new portion of their lives, but he must prepare now, or risk being—well, unprepared. "Okay," he says, determined to prepare. "All—all right." Must prepare.

Stiles blinks at him. He drops inelegantly onto his feet, looking almost disturbed. There's a furrow between his brows and hurt in his eyes. Everything is wrong suddenly, and Derek missed the change. His fingers go cold; he is not prepared for this. "I mean, we can talk about it," Stiles points out. "Obviously."

"Talk about it," parrots Derek stupidly.

"If—If you don't want—"

" _No_ ," Derek says, understanding. "Shut the—shut up. No. I want—" He tries to catch his breath. "I _want_. Stiles, I—" He wants so badly, suddenly. Something he didn't know he wanted, something it had never occurred to him he could _have_ , until about an hour ago. He wants it the way you want something someone wants to take away from you. He wants it abstractly, like when you know you want to order dessert but you haven't seen the menu yet. He wants it passively and deeply. He wants it, but not yet. "Do it," he says firmly, maintaining eye contact. Stiles smiles a little, tentative.

"Not until you make me an honest woman," he teases, grinning now.

Derek gives him a dirty look. "Really?" An honest— _really_? Why does he think he's funny? He's not funny.

Stiles shrugs, jubilantly immune to Derek's irritation. "We're having a _baby_ , apparently," he announces, reality dawning on him as he says it. "A, a _werebaby_ , probably. If it's a dominant trait; what do we know about werewolf genetics?"

"Stiles?"

"This is—ummm, _I_ dunno, it's—"

" _Stiles_."

"What?"

"We should—I mean, if you want. We could..."

Stiles gives him some kind of rudely impatient gesture. "Get it out, King's Speech."

"Married," snaps Derek finally. Shit. He meant to prepare himself before he said that out loud. He never had grandiose plans for this conversation, but at the very least, in a crowded veterinarian office and in response to a biologically improbable medical situation has never really been in his mind as a possible proposal, let alone his ideal one. Leave it to Stiles to piss him off so much he _proposes too fast_.

All the same, Stiles' eyes get wide, and a beatific grin wells slowly up on his face. Low, a little hoarse, he asks, "Are you serious?" 

_No, psych, you've been punked,_ Derek thinks. What an idiot. But before he can verbally express any kind of stress-induced sarcasm, Derek just says, "Yes."

Stiles laughs, once, just an expulsion of delight. Derek guesses they're engaged.

And the thing is, the thing _is_ —

Laura... 

Laura would be laughing her _ass_ off.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I mean," Stiles goes on, as Derek leads him by the hand from the building, " _I_ wanted to be the one to propose, but that's fine. I can work with this."


	2. news, part i

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Telling your friends about mpreg, discussing emotional preparation, Snapchat, and more.

 

" _Pregnant_?" bellows Erica, jolting to her feet. It's a wonderful and attention-grabbing intro to the scene. Great chapter. Bravo.

Stiles sighs with relief. "It finally sinks in," he sighs. Then, "Yes." He takes a huge bite from the second cheeseburger he's been ignoring for favor of trying to convince Erica, Boyd, Lydia, Scott, Scott and Stiles' friend Simone, and Jackson (why is _Jackson_ here? Come to think of it, why are _any_ of them here?) that this isn't some kind of stupid, poorly planned prank. Simone mostly looks bemused. He says with one cheek full of food, "Derek wants me to eat, like, _organic broccoli_ and _whole grain bread_ , but _honestly_? He can suck my dick." He says that part _at_ Derek. Derek looks flatly at Boyd, who simply smiles placidly. Stiles is going on, " _He_ gets to eat shitty food, _I_ get to eat shitty food."

Derek _doesn't_ eat shitty food, and all he asked is that Stiles eat a vegetable. Argumentative is as argumentative does.

"What about your dad?" asks Scott.

Stiles deliberately misunderstands. "He gets to eat shitty salads."

Shaking her head, frustrated, Erica says, "How are you _pregnant_?" She's genuinely bewildered, and Derek can relate. "Like, _how_?"

"It's some magic thing, right?" from Scott.

"Mm-hmm," from Stiles. "Keep it down, Erica, we're in a Burger King. Can you just pretend this is normal? Let me eat." She narrows her eyes, cocks her head a little bit, offended. He takes another bite and adds, muffled, "Derek says he wants to marry me. Which—I'm so far beyond the earthly concept of on board with that it isn't even funny." He holds up his left hand, which has a cheap plastic ring on it. "He bought this for me at the Big Lots. See?" It's got the Batman symbol on it. He waggles his fingers. Derek has vague intentions to buy him a better ring, unless he forgets. Scott tells him it's rad.

"No, I mean, like, where even _is_ it?" Erica gestures emptily. "Where do you _keep_ it?"

That's a good point. All of them look at each other, and then peer curiously in the general direction of Stiles' stomach, which Stiles has been absently rubbing. Then he crunches on an onion ring.

"Well, this is fine and great," Jackson snaps, leaning back and crossing his arms as if this entire situation is taking place just to mildly irritate him. "There's gonna be a gay werewolf shotgun wedding. Beacon Hills gets classier every year." Another good point. Derek's not enjoying this summit.

"I feel like we'd be getting werewolf-married regardless of the kid," Stiles says to Scott. "We talked about it before… It's just that now, you know—Derek promised his great aunt he wouldn't make a baby until he got married." Derek gives him a flat look, which he ignores. He's having a great time making Derek look stupid. "I'm probably not who she was imagining him knocking up, but…"

"Uh-huh," Jackson drawls. Turns, smirks at Derek. "Hey, Derek, _speaking_ of you and Stiles, how do you get werewolf- _divorced_?"

Stiles narrows his eyes. Sets down his cheeseburger. "Hey, that's a good point," he says to Derek. "He'll want to know that for future reference." Jackson looks immeasurably bored by this comeback. So bored that he has to glare a little and drop his head back to rest on top of the Burger King booth. "No offense, Lydia," Stiles adds, reaching for Derek's soda. Derek slaps his hand away; he wants his straw intact. Lydia ignores him, and shares what Derek assumes must be a commiserating look with Scott. Then she returns to her phone. She doesn't appear to be enjoying this any more than Derek is. Derek's pretty sure she's _texting Jackson_ , which his instinct is to be pissed off about, but which he can't help but respect.

"All right," Jackson announces, sliding casually out of the corner booth. He was the last to arrive, so he's on the end, free to leave at any moment. "The next time one of you clowns want to contact me," he says, "don't. C'mon, Lydia." 

He strolls out of the Burger King, leaving Lydia to completely ignore his departure. When Erica, Boyd, Simone, and Scott scoot over to fill in the empty space Jackson left, she follows, but otherwise doesn't look up from her phone. Scott's phone buzzes: Derek guesses she was texting _him_. Derek looks at Stiles, finds him already looking back. The conversation at the table's shifted to being about the last time Scott asked Jackson to meet him someplace, so Derek feels free to give Stiles a Look. Stiles nods minutely, raises unimpressed brows. They both think Jackson's a twit. "Didn't invite him," Stiles adds quietly. "Invited Lydia. He just showed up." Derek shrugs. Stiles stuffs another onion ring into his mouth.

"So," Scott suddenly pipes up. "I just told Kira—" A glimpse of his phone screen reveals a series of continuously arriving grey speech bubbles with all-caps hollering and streams of exclamation points. "—and Allison. Allie wants to know if you're hyphenating."

"Probably?" answers Stiles, tearing open a little cup of barbeque sauce and swirling a fry in it. "I mean, like, I don't want to just stay the same name... But my nickname is, like, my last name abbreviated, so adding a different last name would be..."

"Stiles Hale," interrupts Boyd. Everybody snickers uncertainly. "It's pretty stupid," he goes on boredly, "but so is the situation."

Stiles smirks appreciatively. "So it's fitting," he says. "Yeah. Your mileage may vary." Before the subject can change or return to mockery, Stiles asserts, "Look, you guys, I didn't invite you here so you can have fun at my magic fetus' expense. I need advice on telling my dad. Please contribute, go."

::

"So," Scott says awkwardly to Stiles. They're leaning up against the side of the Camaro, and Derek is in the driver's seat, playing on Stiles' phone. He likes to look at Snapchat. He doesn't have it on his own phone, but Stiles is Snapchat friends with his little sister, so even when she's out of the country, he can see her and her friend with a cartoon dog face. "Having a baby," adds Scott, and Stiles crosses his arms and stands up straighter, swelling with pride. He's been acting like being magically impregnated is some kind of achievement on his part. On the phone screen, Cora has a glowing pink crown thing, and she's modeling it for the camera. Scott adds almost under his breath, "Guess that explains the smell."

"What smell."

"Nothing." Derek pretends not to notice Stiles hunching over to try and squint interrogatively through the tinted window. Contrary to Stiles' baseless opinions, Derek's under no actual obligation to keep him updated on smells. Derek continues skipping rapidly through Stiles' friend Lydia's myriad selfies in her Snap Story, or whatever it's called. She and some of her college friends went bowling last night, and evidence of the excursion is flooded onto her Snapchat. Occasionally there is a video of one of them throwing a gutterball and then laughing hysterically. Derek enjoys these. "Uh, what're you going to tell your dad?" Derek has run out of Snaps to look at. Sighing, he drops the phone into a cupholder.

The sheriff already doesn't particularly like that Stiles fell for a werewolf—even though werewolves are cool, which he seemed intent on reminding Derek. ("You know, _you_ know, I don't have a, a _problem_ with—it's _very cool_. All right?") As if Derek might have self-esteem issues rooted in lycanthropy. If there's one thing Derek likes about himself that's totally removed from Stiles, it's the fact that he's a werewolf.

Not that it's totally removed from Stiles anymore. In fact, it's the opposite. It's _literally implanted within_ Stiles. Derek is torn between discomfort and intense pride, a sensation he's grown somewhat familiar with since he started seeing Stiles. He _put a baby_ in him. But then again, he put a _baby_ in him. He splits the difference and watches Stiles shove his hands in his jacket pockets.

"What do you mean, _what am I going to tell him_ ," Stiles asks incredulously. "I'm going to tell him I'm getting married and he's getting a grandkid, we just covered this in the Burger King." Scott furrows his brow even more, sags his head to one side, glances away, and opens his mouth, like he's about to protest that just because the group ultimately reached a tenuous consensus doesn't necessarily mean it's the best course of action. But Stiles heads him off at the pass: "It's not like I'm too young for it, Greenberg got married a month after graduation."

"I heard they got divorced," Scott offers, and then he and Stiles snicker together.

Derek doesn't get jokes about Greenberg. It makes him self-conscious when they joke about Greenberg. What did this Greenberg do to deserve such derision? Not that Derek cares. He wishes Stiles would stop having this conversation, and return to the car. He wants to take him home and take a shower with him. A fantasy of rimming him in the shower intrudes on his mind, as occasionally happens when he wants to distract himself.

Scott goes on, "How do you think he's gonna take it? In spite of, uh. You know."

Stiles isn't facing Derek, but Derek knows he's cocking an eyebrow. Just to make Scott feel awkward. "You mean my dick, Scott? Is that what you…?"

" _Yes_ , Stiles. God. You're a biological dude. No one knows that better than your _dad_."

"Um, there are a _couple_ people who know that better than my dad, bro," Stiles faux-gently tells Scott. Derek chuckles softly to himself, amused as always by Stiles acting like an asshole for sport; Scott narrows his eyes at Derek through the tinted car window, though, and he has some kind of uncanny ability to _parentally shame_ people, like he's _physically expelling disappointment_. Feeling a little penitent, but not particularly regretful, Derek snatches the phone back up and goes back through Kira's Snap crap: she's at an outdoor craft fair somewhere in Tucson and is sharing photos of her favorite wares. Stiles blesses Scott by dropping the subject. "I dunno," Stiles goes on, "he took it _pretty_ well when he found out about me and Derek by catching me making out with him in a tree." Scott opens his mouth, gleeful, but Stiles cuts him off with an index finger directly under his nose. " _We still don't discuss the tree incident_ ," he snaps, and Scott holds his palms up, placating.

"I remember when he found out about werewolves," Scott suggests, hopeful, in a Scott sort of way. "He did better than I thought he would."

"This time will be better!" Stiles turns more toward Scott, enthused. "Last time all he got out of the news was that his kid is only a fraction of the fuckup he thought he was. This time he's getting a wedding and a grandkid! You _know_ how much he wants a wedding and grandkids."

Scott looks at him funny. "Nope. No, I don't."

"Oh. Well, he wants a wedding and grandkids." Stiles points sort of diagonally at Scott, as if Scott won't believe him. "I can _smell_ it on him."

Scott claps a hand against Stiles' shoulder, grips it tightly in support. "Well," he says, "you should still hide the liquor first this time."

"Definitely." Stiles nods soberly. There's a beat of silence, Scott peering uncomfortably at the sidewalk. Stiles waits.

"Are you..." Scott begins. "Are you okay? With this? It's..." They look at each other. "It's a big change. You're young. I mean..."

"I'm gonna be fine," Stiles shrugs. "It's sort of—it's a rearrangement? I guess? I spent all of last night, like, catatonic, I think. Ask Derek." Scott's kind of mad at Derek right now, for some reason, but even if he did ask Derek, Derek wouldn't have anything to contribute. Stiles has taken this with much more grace than Derek has. "But it's, like," Stiles goes on, "everything is great. Remember Big Guy? You were all, _I can't afford a dog_ , but you can. You do! And now you have a dog!"

"A dog isn't really the same," Scott says, more or less to himself.

"It is the same," argues Stiles, "just, like, on a much larger emotional scale." He gestures, indicates a scale, if it was several feet long and he could hold it in his hands. Derek agrees with Scott, but Stiles is the one being changed physically, so they'll let him have his rationalizations. There's a long pause, and then Stiles nudges Scott with his elbow, reassuring. "It'll be fine, dude," he promises warmly, and his heartbeat is smooth as a millpond. "I've got Derek." Laura would probably make a gagging motion. Just to piss Derek off. "And you," Stiles adds. This he says a little tentatively. "Right?"

"Bro," breathes Scott. "Of _course_ you've got me. Dude!" He grabs Stiles, hugs him tight. Stiles does that Stilinski thing where he slaps Scott's back. For whatever reason, that's how he hugs. "Did you think you wouldn't have me? Stiles! You're stuck with me for _life_ , man!"

Stiles laughs, a little tearfully. "I just wanted to make _sure_ , you know. I just like reassurance. You know." The more often Stiles says "you know," the less positive he is that you know. 

Scott promises, "I do know, dude. It's you and me. And Dupree." He gestures toward Derek when he says that, and he and Stiles crack up laughing. Derek thinks they're stupid.

::

That night, after they kick each other for almost twenty minutes, Derek pins Stiles down on the couch and kisses him until they can hardly keep their eyes open any longer.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> He means Derek's support will help him through it, not that Derek will make a good shield.


	3. news, part ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heart-to-hearts with your fiance's father, salad thoughts, and more.

 

The thing about Stiles is he accepts the weirdest of things once he's seen that they're true. Werewolves are real? Got it. Scott is one? Done deal. Dating a werecoyote? Great. Got dumped by the werecoyote? Depression. Now dating the werewolf he used to hate? No problem. This is how Stiles functions. He's quick on his mental feet. He calculates quickly. Too quickly, sometimes.

The pregnancy is no different. Derek has noticed that Stiles was impregnated. So has Stiles. They are both aware that Stiles is now gestating a werewolf. But despite being the one with the fetus god knows where in him, Stiles hasn't freaked out half as much as Derek has. Mostly he's made shitty comments about Derek's nerves, and Derek's caught him slowing in front of the infant section at the store, frowning, narrowing his eyes, thoughtful. _Derek's_ just been wigging out.

(Derek spent an entire day hurrying around the house, staring at it forlornly, sure he needed to turn it into a family home, but not entirely positive how to do that, where even to start. "Damn it, Derek, have you tried sitting down for like, _five seconds_?" Stiles snapped the fifth time Derek passed him on the couch. "Sit. Put your body. Vamos." He patted the cushion next to him—no, _slapped_ is a better verb for what Stiles did, he slapped the cushion confrontationally, and Derek parked himself there. "Good," Stiles said, pleased, and slid gracelessly off the couch to his knees. "Yeah, let's—" Shuffled towards Derek, wedged himself between him and the coffee table. "Let's see about getting you to relax," he said, voice dropping low, hands hot on Derek's thighs. Derek was resistant to relaxation, his mind was whirring at a hundred miles a minute, but Stiles is good at this, he mouthed at Derek's dick through his pants, reached up and fumbled gracelessly with his belt; something about his ineptitude really turns Derek on, and this was no departure—)

 _But the point is_ , Stiles must have gleaned this accepting nature from his mother, because the sheriff, the sheriff—he isn't quite so… so… so _Stiles_. As Stiles is.

"Here's the thing," is the first thing Stiles says. Derek's rolling his eyes, ready for whatever directionless awkwardness is about to unfold. But then, calmly, Stiles informs his father, "Derek got me pregnant, and we are conveniently now engaged." Derek whips his head to the side, goggles at him: what in the _hell_? Derek knows for a _fact_ Stiles spent several days and nights thinking over what he would say, and the fact that _this_ is what he decided on is bewildering: this is _not_ how you _treat_ a _situation_ like this. Derek can't figure out how you _do_ treat a situation like this, but certainly it's with more consideration than this, isn't it? _Isn't it_? Inexplicably, Derek has déjà vu. He digs his blunt nails into Stiles' forearm, and Stiles pats his hand, not placating but jaunty, like everything is fine.

The sheriff squints. Then he looks irritated, tired, like he's seen every inch of the world and still come back with no words to describe his son. "Stiles," he begins, but Stiles waves a hand. 

"Hang on, wait." He goes pawing around himself on the couch for some scans of a bestiary he printed from a PDF specifically for this afternoon. "Check this out, Dad," he says, flipping through to the right page and skimming studiously. "Hm, smn hn... A _ha_ , _theorized that in times of tranquility,_ " Stiles reads, gamely, " _the wolf may become capable of impregnating his or her mate with a we—_ "

"His or her _mate_?" the sheriff repeats, perplexed. "Stiles, what _is_ this?" 

"Dad," Stiles says. "Listen. Are you listening? I'm ha—" He presses one palm into his abdomen. "I'm, we _did_ it."

"You _did_ it."

"We did it. Dude! We _did_ —"

"Mate," the sheriff parrots once more, finally starting to believe Stiles. "His or her _mate_. As in, as in—" He looks, one step below horrified, at Derek; and when Derek doesn't look bored and annoyed, exclaims, "You _mated_ my _son_?" Derek winces. He doesn't often wince, but the blow to his self-consciousness is staggering.

"It's just a traditional term," Derek says, raw and weary. "I—I know how this must sound—"

"No, I don't think you do," the sheriff hisses. Derek scrubs a hand down his face. " _Pregnant_." He scoffs a little. "You're, you're, _you_ are—" The scoff turns into a sullen little chuckle. "You're messing with me. This is some bizarre, psychotic prank you've concocted—"

"Dad?" says Stiles, in a tone of voice that implies they've argued about this before, but Derek knows for a fact that they've never argued about this before, so what sort of gall does it take to act like this news is equivalent to being told they're out of milk and the sheriff is simply overreacting? Only Stiles. It's probably an act, an attempt at making the sheriff calmer. Sort of like the yawn effect. "Dad," Stiles is saying again, "are you listening? Can you calm down? Listen." He puts his hand to his stomach again. "Dad, breathe, I'm trying to—"

The yawn effect is not working. "Pregnant," the sheriff is directing at Stiles.

"It's," Stiles begins.

"Pregnant," the sheriff says to Derek.

Stiles drops back against the couch. "No, by all means, keep repeating it," he sighs.

It seems Derek cannot move. This is alarming. Mostly it's that he has no preprogrammed response for this situation. He doesn't know what one _does_ when presenting information like this to the already-frazzled-in-general parent of one's intended. He manages to bring up a mental list of available behaviors—if not for these circumstances specifically, then to those similar enough that the reactions are familiar. He sees himself trying to ask the sheriff for his blessing in asking Stiles' hand in—but that tradition is _utterly_ moronic, and Stiles would never have thought of it in the first place. He sees himself giving the sheriff a phone call before this happened, but he has no idea what he would have said, nor what the sheriff would think. In the end, this was the best solution, Derek thinks, which is funny because it's a terrible plan. The sheriff, meanwhile, has staggered to his feet and haggardly announced, "Pregnant. You're, my son, my _son_ ," he drags out the _n_ sound, "is pre—with a werewolf, it's—" He laughs mirthlessly.

It goes on like that, actually. The sheriff by all means continues to repeat the news while Stiles alternates between affirming the information and reading from the stupid little packet. It becomes increasingly clear that this is all that will happen, but Derek doesn't get any less tense for this realization. At any second, Derek could be cast out onto the street. Derek could be rejected by the only real father figure he's had even adjacent to his life in upwards of a decade.

There is some swearing. The sheriff goes looking for his alcohol, and Stiles pretends not to know where it all went, resulting in some more swearing. And Derek manages to tune most of this out. Simply incapable of being emotionally present for this. He pinches the skin between his eyebrows and thinks about arugula. Thinks of a salad, and his future attempts to convince Stiles to eat one every day instead of once a month. Thinks of how nice it would be to eat one _right now_. The sheriff shouts something and bangs out the back door. Stiles stands at the window and watches him leave. Then he returns to the couch and sits next to Derek. "He's fine," he tells Derek matter-of-factly. "He just needed some air. He'll be fine." Stiles' heartbeat is miserable and uneven. Derek narrows his eyes suspiciously. He doesn't say anything, though. Instead he lays his arm across the top of the couch, behind Stiles: like a show of affection, if Stiles acknowledges it. Derek thinks of when his cousin was pregnant. When would that have been? About a decade ago? Maybe longer? She was having twins, and everyone fawned over her. They put her feet up on chairs whenever she sat down. Protested loudly whenever she carried stuff. Brought her tea. Should Derek be bringing Stiles tea? Derek gets the feeling Stiles would throw a fit if everyone catered to him like that. A salad with a light dressing, maybe with some carrot shreds in it.

No: probably Stiles will love the special treatment at first, while he's still capable of moving around; but once he's inflated and swollen and irritable, it will infuriate him.

Because Stiles must perpetually make life difficult for Derek.

Derek is immeasurably grateful he's doing this with Stiles and not having a simpler life with someone who isn't Stiles. Because Derek has no sense of self preservation, apparently.

The sheriff returns about ten minutes later, tired out and a little meek. He drags himself once again to his chair to eye Derek like he's defiled his only child. Derek tastes acid, because he has done _exactly that_. Guilty as charged. He feels his neck and shoulders tense, a hundred percent unsure what's going to happen next. "Just," the sheriff says, rubs the back of his neck. "I just, this was never something I expected to…"

All Derek can manage is opening his mouth and coming up empty. Opening his palms and coming up empty. Neither did he. He, too, did not expect for this to…

"Did you know?" the sheriff directs at Derek. "Did you. I mean, did you, were you _aware_ of this possibility."

Derek's at a loss for words, so he just shuts his eyes. Stiles' father seems inexplicably satisfied.

Stiles is peering back and forth between them, something building in his heartbeat. "Surprise," he says at length, his excitement ringing in the hollowness of the room's atmosphere. He waits a beat, and then beams at his father. Palms tossed out, like _congratulate me_!

Like the pregnancy, the _hug_ also comes as a complete surprise to Derek—first that it happens in the _first_ place, and then that he's expected to _participate_. Just, one second, there is the staring, and the next, Stiles and his father are on their feet and hugging, and then Derek is staring, mystified; and third, he is being yanked up by Stiles and wrenched into the group, and—

The sheriff smells like bitter tea, maple syrup, paper, gasoline, oak, and Stiles.

"A wedding and a grandkid," the sheriff says throatily and presses a hard kiss against the side of Stiles' head.

"Thought you'd like that," Stiles says, grinning. "I have a bet with Scott."

"I don't know what that means," responds the sheriff, but the subsequent end of the hug doesn't deplete the warmth in the room. "Mate," the sheriff says once more, disparaging. Stiles rolls his eyes, nods his head. "Anything else I should know?"

"No, Dad," says Stiles; "I just want you there when I have my litter."

The sheriff pales a little. " _Litter_?" He whips his head to the side to look at Derek. This time he catches Derek shutting his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose, and sighs irritably. "Seriously, Stiles?" Stiles is smirking. "Does parental deference mean _nothing_ to you?"

"You just make it really easy, Dad," Stiles tells him.

"You're a menace," answers the sheriff. Momentarily he addresses Derek. "Marriage?" Derek nods in a sort of _might as well_ kind of way. "Welcome to the family, then," the sheriff says. "You ready to be a Stilinski? It takes patience." He says this last sentence _at_ Stiles. Derek shivers, looking at Stiles beam at his father and realizing how much he's missed _family_.

He thinks Laura might take issue with the suggestion that Derek's a Stilinski, but that's not the point. The point is acceptance, welcoming, and long-suffering concession to everything that Stiles is, has been, will be. The point is Stiles' newfound capacity for growth and creation, and the sudden potential in Derek: a family tree, at the top of which rests Sheriff Stilinski.

Laura wouldn't give a shit. She'd mention it twice.

::

Stiles demands to be taken to Taco Bell on the way home, and as they're waiting for the exhausted woman to hand Derek Stiles' Dr Pepper, Derek gets the distinct feeling this is the beginning of a sharp slope.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The sheriff is excited about the wedding: Scott owes Stiles a Big Gulp. 
> 
> That's the thing about mpreg fics, is sometimes they're disgusting and sappy. I'm so sorry about this, ugh. Fuck.


	4. decisions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nagging, hand-me-downs, and more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to do research to write this. Some of these How To Mom websites are kind of cynically hilarious.

Stiles and Derek argue a lot the first month, and various standers-by find it disconcerting.

Derek does not, because arguing with Stiles is rejuvenating and familiar, and because they're primarily arguing about Stiles' eating habits. "Stiles," Derek tells Stiles, "you're supposed to be drinking lots of water," and Stiles makes a noise Derek might have blindly labeled a tractor being infused with a bear had he not watched Stiles' head roll on his shoulders with the effort it took to produce it.

"I drink _plenty_ of water, douchebag," Stiles decides. Whips back to his laptop, which is whirring loudly because it's running two different video game emulators.

Derek turns Stiles' beloved spinny chair back around, leaving Stiles' Ivysaur without a command. "One mini water bottle at lunch doesn't equal eight glasses of water."

"And the werewolf displays his prowess at basic arithmetic," Stiles announces, deadpan. Derek's consumed with an impulse to throw himself down the basement stairs. "Sufficiently charmed, his object of devotion concedes to carrying his pups. Together, they couple in the moonlight—"

"Stiles, I'm not asking you to go vegan," Derek says, exasperated, "I'm asking you to drink a glass of water while you battle Team fucking Rocket."

"Fine," Stiles snaps. "It's _your_ water bill that's gonna shoot up when I have to pee all the time." He spins back to his game, jabbing slightly harder at the keys on his laptop than is altogether necessary, and pointedly gulps at the cup of cool water Derek brought him from the kitchen. Derek folds his arms, satisfied. If Stiles wants to die of dehydration, it's up to Derek to smash him into submission. "And this is Team _Aqua_ ," Stiles tacks on.

=

One day towards the end of the month, Derek finds Stiles in the unfinished bedroom that will eventually house their spawn. Derek stands in the doorway and looks for a moment before shutting the door behind him and sitting beside Stiles on the window seat.

Stiles offers Derek a gummy worm, and Derek declines wordlessly. The day is bright and sunny behind them, trees stretching out and mountains rising up in the view from the window, but they're looking at the empty room with its half-completed hardwood flooring and undressed walls.

"How come you're in here," Derek asks presently.

Stiles sighs deeply, pensively. "Just," he gestures at his head, "adjusting, I guess. It's mind-boggling, but I _am_ old enough to rear children."

He looks at Derek, and Derek continues to stare around the room, mentally cataloging all the things that need to be done, but he feels warmed under Stiles' gaze.

"How old do you feel?" Stiles asks.

"I'm twenty-seven," he says, and he can feel Stiles roll his eyes even when he isn't looking.

"I _know_ , smartass, but how old do you _feel_."

"Anywhere from forty-six to fourteen," Derek replies promptly.

Stiles sighs again. "Same, I guess," he says.

Derek listens to people chattering in his kitchen, to Scott and Isaac's dog making a goddamn racket in the yard, to birds having some sort of argument with each other a ways away, and after a few minutes, Stiles shoves awkwardly closer to Derek and lays his head on his shoulder. Derek hesitates, and then weaves his fingers through Stiles', and Stiles relaxes palpably. 

"Also," Stiles adds eventually, "I wanted to avoid Monica treating me like I've joined the Girls' Club or whatever," and Derek doesn't even bother suppressing a laugh.

::

"I got some things together for you," the sheriff informs Stiles and Derek, who are barefoot and in pajamas on the front porch because it's before dawn on Sunday and it's a crime the sheriff is up and heading to work right now. He removes a cardboard box from the front passenger seat of his cruiser, carries it to the porch, and hands it to Derek. It's nowhere near as heavy as Derek was expecting it to be: he holds it in one hand and tips it toward Stiles, while the sheriff buries his own hands into the pockets of his uniform pants.

"Wha'd you get me, Pops?" Stiles asks gleefully, and immediately plunges his hands into the box's depths.

"You don't need to go through it right now," says the sheriff somewhat awkwardly; "it's just a bunch of little things to help you guys out."

Stiles ignores him. He produces a fistful of minuscule articles of clothing. "Clothes!" he crows. He tips his hand this way and that to appraise them. "Gender-neutral," he determines of the colors. "Very liberal of you, Dad." 

"Just general, basic baby things," comments the sheriff pointlessly, shuffling his feet. 

" _Books_ ," Stiles declares. He digs the clothes and a little terrycloth elephant with a rattle inside over to one side of the box and begins unearthing picture books, cardboard books, a little plastic-paged book that could presumably be read in the bath. "Poky Puppy," reads Stiles; "The Giving Tree, that dude was rad. "

"Just some things from the attic," explains the sheriff. "Just some old things..."

"Ooh!" Stiles plucks a tiny sock away and brandishes one book. "Check it out," he says, smirking at Derek. It's _Good Night Moon_. "This is his number one favorite book," he tells his father, waggling the book. "Literary gold. And fitting, right?" He grins. "Because _moon_. _Werewolves_?" Both the sheriff and Derek stare at him, unimpressed. "The _moon_?"

"Your favorite was Go Dog Go," contributes the sheriff. 

"Dog driving cars," shrugs Stiles, returning to rooting through the box. "Arguing about hats. Can't be beat. Ooh, hey." He plucks up and reads the back cover of _What to Expect When You're Expecting_ , the second edition published in 1994. 

After a moment, it becomes clear Stiles is peering with interest and respect at this book. "Stiles," says Derek exasperatedly. 

" _What_?"

"It's not..." Derek gestures helplessly at the cover, which has an illustration of a pregnant woman in a pink dress, presumably reading the book she's on the cover of. "This doesn't _apply_ to you."

"It says mothers- _and_ fathers-to-be."

"Probably fathers-to-be of _human children_ , you idiot."

"Well, I gotta get advice from _some_ where," says Stiles irritably, but he pitches the book back into the box and continues digging through its contents. "Okay," he says discovering a stack of brand new baby pajamas. All have had their tags removed, except one that Derek assumes the sheriff missed. Stiles lifts these up: they're still starchy. "Now, _this_ I _know_ you didn't find in the attic, Daddio."

"Okay," says the sheriff, more or less unphased by now by any kinds of bickering Stiles and Derek do in his presence. "Busted. I haven't received a baby shower invitation, I gotta provide for my grandchild—"

"If you get wind of a baby shower in the works," Stiles tells him darkly, "call in for a five-nine-four. Got it? Shut that shit down."

"Really? Mischief?"

"Tailored to me," agrees Stiles, returning once again to the task at hand. "Jeez, Dad, are you sure you got enough socks? I can't get away from these socks. There's more microscopic socks in here than there are baby feet in the world. I can't—"

He stops short, abruptly enough that Derek tenses up, and when he looks, Stiles is producing from the box a worn, faded, knit blue blanket. He holds it like a religious artifact, and when he looks up, his eyes are wet.

"Well, that, I just found that in the attic," says Stiles' father. "Saw it when I went looking for the clothes, and the books. Thought you might—ah, I mean. You used to sl—"

"Sleep with it every night, I know," Stiles says, and then he nods. Sniffs. "I put it up there after Mom—I just." He scrubs a palm under one eye. He lets go of the blanket, leaving it draped partly over Derek's forearm—it's unbelievably soft, and it smells like Stiles and the sheriff and a third person Derek's never met and knows he never will. There's nothing particularly special about it, just a cotton, textured thing, a soft shade of blue. But on one corner the silk edging has been sewn back on with a different color thread than on the rest of the blanket. This blanket was loved.

Stiles goes to his father and hugs him, and Derek feels half like he's intruding on a private moment and half like he's blessed to see it happening. "Thanks, Dad," Stiles says softly, voice quiet and ratcheting around in a higher register.

"You're welcome, son," says Mr. Stilinski.

After Stiles backs up, laughs a little at himself, the sheriff goes to work, and Derek brings the box into the house and drops it on the floor by the wooden crib that Lydia had delivered last week. There are a few things there, because neither of them wants to carry that shit up the stairs. They stand there a minute, looking at these objects together, leaned haphazardly against the banister. Then, Stiles looks at Derek. "You should bring that upstairs soon," he informs him.

" _You_ do it," Derek replies peevishly, even though if Stiles called his bluff, Derek would take the thing up for him without hesitation.

" _You're_ the _werewolf_ ," Stiles says petulantly instead. He pitches himself onto the couch. "Read me Good Night Moon. _Do it_."

Derek hands him the elephant and the blanket and reads him _Good Night Moon_ derisively, and although Stiles keeps up a running and frankly unnecessary commentary, it _is_ a sort of soothing story, and he dozes off when Derek's done. Slowly, ineptly, Stiles slumps to the side and collapses against Derek's arm.

Derek tries to shimmy his arm out from under him, but somehow ends up with Stiles tucked under it, clinging unconsciously to Derek's middle.

And Derek sits in the quiet living room, Stiles snoring on top of him, and he can practically hear Laura saying, "Look at you, all in love and domestic," and he sighs, half because he misses her and half because it's true. Maybe in thirds, because there's a third of his mind dedicated to the fact that his arm is falling asleep.

::

It's a couple mornings later when Stiles shuffles down the hall, bleary eyed and unshaven in his pajamas, and finds both crib, now assembled, and box of attic gatherings upstairs in the extra bedroom at the front of the house. He yawns and peers around. The walls need painting; the hardwood's in shambles; and the blinds were on the floor when Derek found them. Stiles says, "We should probably get on making this habitable."

Derek, abandoning his attempts to untangle the blinds, sighs. "Guess we should go to Furniture Warehouse."

Stiles looks at him. "That is the sexiest thing you've ever said."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lydia's grandmother gave her the crib when she and Jackson announced their engagement. Unamused, Lydia promptly regifted it. "She won't be happy I gave it to a gay couple," she told Derek with relish.


	5. not exactly a chapel wedding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Symptoms of pregnancy, my fiance is a dickhead, nuptials, and more.

"Don't worry, Der," Stiles says, voice low and rough and breathy, thighs shaking with the effort of pushing into Derek. A small, crooked grin like a secret. "I can't get you pregnant."

Derek opens his mouth to respond, but realizes too late all he's going to be able to manage is an infuriated, impassioned groan.

Finally, Stiles bottoms out, and takes a moment to inhale. Exhale. Inhale. "Doc Deaton says I can't get _anybody_ pregnant right now. Oh, god..." He shifts a little, hands sweaty and flexing on Derek's hips, his back. "Ummm... You good?"

"You couldn't get me pregnant _anyway_ ," Derek finally gains the capacity to tell him, teeth grit. " _Yes_ , now _fucking move_."

"Fine, _your highness_ ," Stiles chides, and then he snaps his hips in so hard Derek collapses on his face and digs his claws into the sofa cushion. "Yeah, _now_ you're not complaining— _uh_ —" He's such an asshole; Derek reaches back and grips his knee, trying to tell him something. He doesn't know what, though.

::

Scott stares at the couch the next morning like it's offended him, nostrils flaring. "Dude," he says, scandalized. "The _couch_?"

" _O_ kay," says Stiles, tying his shoes nearby. His tone suggests he's had to have this argument several times today already and it's already become a boring sort of irritant. "We're getting married in a month, he looks like that, I don't know what you want," he adds, flippantly waving a dismissive hand in the air.

"Right, but guests have to sit on that," urges Scott. "Guests like _me_ , like _Scott_." Derek snorts. Then Scott jerks his head to the side, looks at Derek like he hadn't even realized he was there. "Is he even allowed to _do_ that right now?" he demands of Derek. Derek stares at him blearily over the rim of his coffee mug.

"Yeah, no, it's—" Stiles says, hurrying about, looking for his jacket. He rushes past Derek into the kitchen. Derek plucks the jacket off the back of a chair. "It's super dangerous, could crush the baby," Stiles calls from the kitchen. He pops back into the living room, gestures with his hands like he's rotating two globes in the air. "But it was absolutely worth it because Derek's _ass_ is like—"

"I get it, stupid question," Scott drawls loudly, laughing a little in spite of himself. "Also, _gross_ , Stiles. Seriously."

"It's a _perfect ass_ ," Stiles insists. Derek hands him the jacket, and Stiles peers at it, surprised. "Oh," he says. Then he beams. "Aw, thanks, baby."

Scott looks aggressively at his watch, and then groans with chagrin like a toddler. "Let's _go_ , dude! Come _on_ —" 

::

"This is great," Stiles says knowingly, standing before the toilet. "I love having to piss all the time. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life. In fact—" He twists, looks over his shoulder at Derek; Derek wrinkles his nose, frets that Stiles is gonna piss all over the toilet seat. "I'm going to build a house in front of the toilet," Stiles tells him. "I'm gonna stay here and live my life, raise my child here..." He's still talking, even as he's returned to urinating like a fucking grown-up.

Eventually, he hitches up his pajama pants and flushes the toilet, grumbling to himself a little. Very Jewish. Derek nuzzles the back of his neck while he washes his hands.

::

"I'm serious," Stiles yells hoarsely from the hall bathroom while Derek stares at tax papers spread out across the coffee table. "Like, a _summer home_ , here in front of the john. _Ocean facing_. There's a breathtaking view of this scented candle, and a h—augh—" He retches, and Derek winces sympathetically.

::

" _Je_ sus, _finally_ ," Stiles practically moans when Derek hands him a plastic bag. He just about destroys the bag in his quest to remove a soft taco from inside. "Do you have _any_ idea how long it's been since I've had one of these? _Any_ idea at all."

"About a day and a half," Derek replies, flopping down next to him on the porch and chomping a taquito.

"I'm afraid I can't award you any money for that," Stiles says, mouth full, eyes shut in ecstasy; "The answer the judges were looking for was: an entire lifetime."

"Maybe they'll give it to me after the break," Derek drawls, taking a sneaky sip of his Pepsi.

Stiles reaches imperiously for the soda and, sighing, Derek hands it to him.

::

"Lately I've been sleeping all the time," Stiles tells Scott and Jackson drowsily, laying in the grass while they lean gingerly against a tree and look at him like he's grown two extra heads. "If I ever get slightly warm, or, or slightly _cold_ , or if I stay the same temperature for a while, I just—" He makes a gesture, like a lemming zipping off a cliff. "Bloop! Doze off immediately." Then he groans, rubs at his eyes with his knuckles. Adds in a softer, whinier voice, "I'm just so _tired_."

"Maybe you're not running enough," Scott offers. Stiles snorts quietly, rolling in the grass, because since the visit to Deaton's clinic, he hasn't been running at _all_. "You could exercise. Or maybe you're sick, bro!"

"It's just fatigue," Jackson says. Scott and Stiles (and Derek, unseen, from the window seat upstairs) peer at him wonderingly, and he scowls. "It must be exhausting being _you_ all the time," he adds, but Stiles just gives him a look like he's let something slip.

"M'kay, Squidward," Stiles says, grinning. Then he goes on, "Doc Deaton says it's normal. So does the book." He means the book the sheriff gave him on pregnancy, which—Derek would like Stiles to keep in mind—was written for _women_ giving birth to _human_ children, but which Stiles continues to read anyway. "But I still zonk out all over the place, even at work, I—" He tosses one hand up into the air. "I almost slept through some dude walking out with like _four books_ yesterday. Jenna would have _killed_ me, killed me and my unborn _child_." Scott rolls his eyes fondly, puts his hands in his hip pockets and looks toward the sun. Stiles drops his hand back onto his stomach. "I can't afford to sleep all the time. You know what they say about people who snooze?" Neither Scott nor Jackson reply; in fact, Jackson isn't even paying attention to him anymore, really. "They _lose_ ," Stiles tells them. He's still lying on the ground. What a fucking idiot. "They lose," Stiles repeats, to himself, sighing. After a minute, he tacks on, "And I have these weird dreams about Nurse Lydia and Dr. Hale. EMT Malia. Sur—"

Jackson's twisted his head back around, directed a horrified look down at Stiles, which Derek understood perfectly until suddenly he repeats, scandalized, "Dr. Hale?"

::

"You don't think I'm taking this too well," Stiles requests confirmation of Derek in the middle of second dinner, an entire carrot hanging out of his mouth. While Derek squints at him, he crunches through it and it falls past his scrambling hands and into his lap.

"No?"

"Like, you don't think I'm this calm now because I'm going to have a breakdown later."

That's stupid. "No."

Stiles nods, chews his carrot, and stares meditatively at the floor. He isn't taking this _too well_. Derek doesn't think it's _possible_ to take a thing _too well_. He's taking to this the way Stiles takes to everything—with gusto, and a lot of sarcasm. Stiles sighs, "I really want a beer."

Derek offers him his soda. A usable straw is a minimal sacrifice for Stiles.

Stiles takes it glumly, and the first thing he does is bite the straw.

::

They go down to San Francisco to watch a Giants game, and Stiles eats two hot dogs, a thing of nachos, and one of those little plastic baseball hats full of ice cream. Two of the players are playing like "schmucks," and Stiles alleges that their "sweet asses" are their only qualities, which Derek finds mostly unamusing until Stiles coos, "Aw, it's okay: they don't have your eyes, angel cake," at which point Derek finds the whole thing _thoroughly_ unamusing and socks him in the arm.

Stiles corrals Derek after they skip out in the eighth inning, takes a picture of the two of them near the Golden Gate, in the painfully bright late afternoon sun.

::

Laura used to mourn for Derek's potential future children (whose existence Derek would repeatedly deny, because children were _the worst_ ), would say, "They're gonna come at you with 'Dad, throw a baseball around with me,' and you'll be like, 'Wah, wah, _loser_ ,' and knock them down and steal their glasses."

"Like my kids would even _have_ glasses," Derek would retort, and he and Laura would devolve into socking each other in the arm until Laura had to swerve to miss a tree.

Derek wishes a lot Laura could be here for this.

"Red wine, an _eclipse_ —this is so _satanic_ ," Stiles is deciding, squinting around in the light of the partially darkened moon. Derek thrusts the cup—one of those plastic wine cups with the detachable bottoms, since they don't own any nice cups—for a second time, and Stiles takes it, muttering, "O _kay, damn_."

"Up 'til the early eighteenth century it was blood instead of wine," Derek says, and when he said it he wasn't sure if Stiles would be intrigued or repulsed by this information. 

Stiles' response is to grin wide, eyes going inexplicably a little flirtatious. "Yeah? _Whose_ blood?" Intrigue, definitely.

"You sure you should be having wine?" Scott implores from nearby. Stiles twists to look for him, his crown of leaves and berries slipping down over one eye; but his subpar human vision probably can't find him in the shadows of the treeline. 

"It's _fine_ , Scott," he says, making an almost-shrug, palms out, bobbing his head like he's showing off how not in danger he is. He's already starting to react with irritation to everyone's displays of concern. _It begins_. Stiles turns back to Derek, gulps the wine messily. It's cabernet souvignon. Whatever's left over, Derek can use to cook, probably. Stiles hands the cup back to derek. "Anything to say?" he asks, tongue chasing the taste of the wine on his lips, while Derek drinks. Derek shakes his head. "Seriously? That's it? No 'with this booze, I thee wed'?"

Derek would typically be irritated that Stiles is ruining his carefully achieved solemn air, but even if Derek hadn't simply pieced together the steps to this tradition from his great aunt's diary and then made up a couple of the earlier parts based on pure conjecture, tonight still wouldn't be a night for petty annoyance. Tonight's a night for this: Derek quirks a grin at Stiles, takes his hand. 

"That's it?" Stiles asks again.

"That's it," Derek confirms. 

Stiles stands, at a loss, for a long minute.

"Is that it?" Scott calls from nearby.

"So he claims," Stiles calls back. "Shouldn't there be more? There should be more."

Derek was just kidding about the petty annoyance. "There isn't more, Stiles."

"There should be."

"I—I feel like we just went over this—" 

"Don't you feel like there should be more?"

Derek sighs, stares at him. He hands Stiles the wine once again. Stiles takes it, and then he pushes his leaves back up with his wrist, sloshing the wine a little bit. Stiles is dressed like a complete fucking jackass, all poorly matched patterns and a vest that makes Derek want to kiss him stupid. He could have just worn the lobeira leaves pinned to his ridiculous vest, but he saw a crude illustration in a book published in 1503 and insisted on a garland. He's wearing chipped, ugly cufflinks he borrowed from his father and his tie is a deeply blue honeycomb pattern; the vest is new and the shoes, the shoes are very old. Derek thinks Stiles may have worn them to his high school graduation. He's the fucking bride. "Fine," says Derek irritably. The other have started talking amongst themselves: the consensus seems to be that it must not be over yet. "What else should there be."

Stiles throws back the rest of the wine like a shot, throws the cup to the ground. Then he crushes the thing with his foot. Before Derek can react, he kisses Derek so fiercely that Derek stumbles back a step; it takes Derek a second to loosen up and kiss him back, but when he does, he gets why people kiss when they get married. It feels... cosmic. He can _physically feel_ his life knitting itself to Stiles and whatever's inside him. He can't _see_ what their lives will look like, but just for a second, like a flicker, like a little flash of lightning, he can feel it. The self-conscious sense of discomfort from being _observed_ melts swiftly away, leaving nothing in its wake but passion and bliss. Not that Derek would admit it.

Their lips part, and Derek follows him an inch or two, not really ready for it to end. Then, abruptly, Stiles whips to face Scott's general direction and declares jubilantly, "We're married!" The words barely escape before Scott's barreling into him, knocking him onto the ground; Derek's fingers twitch.

He shoves his hands into his pockets, turns, and peers over at the small, fenced-in patch of earth where Laura's buried. A small bloom of aconite—Derek's doing—and white lilies surrounding—Boyd's doing. Malia built the fence, crooked and angular. Stiles laid down the little stepping stones, not very level at all. Even Stiles and Scott's little friend Liam showed up one day and contributed a little baby catnip, which has now sprawled into a bush that takes up the entire northeast corner of the plot. Some misshapen version of a "pack" came together to create Laura's final resting place, and while it wasn't Laura's pack, it means something to Derek that they mimicked it out of respect for her. He wonders often how things would have unfolded for everyone if he'd been in Laura's place.

However, tonight: Derek can't really bring himself to regret his life tonight. In spite of everything, he has this, Stiles and Scott laughing and getting up off the ground, Boyd calling for a pizza, some girl Erica brought trying to decide if she has a tic bite, the sheriff putting a hand on Derek's shoulder and squeezing once, in support, or maybe welcome. Right now, the moon is eerie and red and Derek can feel his mother tingling in his fingertips. Right now, there's growth and elated potential buzzing around this house and Derek's newfound spouse. Right now, Derek is okay. And right now, Laura would probably be happy for him.

He hasn't quite decided yet if she would hate Stiles or not, though.

::

The back patio has been very recently cleared of debris (Derek doesn't go out there very often), and set with old, splintering patio furniture. Someone, Allison probably, hung fairy lights, strung from house to trees and back to the house again. Everyone's been served peach cobbler and challah, and they're all hanging around drinking wine. 

Maybe Derek wasn't supposed to hear it, but he does: Cora has pulled Stiles aside in the shadows, just beyond the pile of firewood. "Look," she's telling Stiles; "I just wanted to tell you something."

"Is it that you hate my guts?" asks Stiles. "Because I—"

"What? No."

"Oh, _don't_ act like that's totally out of the realm of possibility, here, sis."

" _Don't_ —No. That's not what I—Jesus, can you make this more difficult?"

"Fine. Sorry. Please continue."

A breeze picks up, but it's not cold at all; if anything, it gets hotter. "It's just that—my brother needed something," Cora tells Stiles firmly. "He didn't know what it was. I thought he needed distance."

" _You_ needed distance," Stiles points out, not unkindly.

"Yeah. But he didn't. Turns out he needed you." There is a pause. "You'd kill for him."

"Uh, _yeah_. In a second. Who wouldn't?"

Cora seems to like this answer, because she doesn't answer for a long moment. "Thanks for the cobbler," she says momentarily. "Mazel tov."


	6. marital

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Discomfiting romance, mundane kitchen rescues, spousal communication, and more.

Derek, lazily propped up on pillows on his bed, idly scrolls through wiki pages on Stiles' laptop. Stiles, bundled up in extra blankets, head on Derek's chest, alternates dozing and watching noncommittally. Eventually he sighs. "Look at you using a computer like a real boy," he says drowsily.

"And I was _just_ thinking how glad I was you hadn't said that yet," Derek returns.

Stiles snorts, starts to make a shitty comment; but before he can get it out of his mouth, he's already asleep. It turns into a soft little hum that he mashes into Derek's t-shirt.

::

Stiles wakes Derek up at ten in the morning on a Tuesday by jumping on him.

"Deaton's mad that he had to read up on obstetrics," he says by way of greeting. "It was super weird, but he says I'm healthy and the kid's bulking up." Derek is still like dough, eyes burning, skin warm, mind drifting in that space between sleeping and waking. Stiles beams at him, adds, "Like he's working out, he's _lifting_ in there," so he summons from deep within him a response. All that's there is a vaguely perplexed hum and a hand groping its way out of the covers for Stiles. Stiles is unimpressed. He says dully, "Good morning, sunshine."

::

Stiles shoots a text out, and momentarily Derek hears a chorus of muffled, frustrated groans, followed by the sound of a number of irritated werewolves trudging out of their respective rooms. Honestly, they need to find a better place to hang out anyway.

"Seriously?" Derek says, as the others grumble their way out the front door. "No sarcastic commentary? No suggestions I'm boring? Predictable?"

Stiles tosses his phone onto the dresser, and then goes about emptying his pockets. "No?" he's saying meanwhile. "I'm into it. Like, I'm pretty sure everyone above the age of, like, thirteen wants to have sex on their birthday. It was a good suggestion." His pockets are all full of receipts, and they come out in a messy, shredded lump when he finally extricates his keys. Finally he begins to approach Derek, and there's nothing inherently erotic happening right now, but just the promise of what's gonna happen has Derek itching to put his hands on him. He can already feel that taut warmth in his palms, on the pads of his fingers. "It's not, um... It's predictable, but not boring. It's not... I guess..." He grins, a little embarrassed, and stumbles in his effort to toe his shoes off. "I guess I'm just... you know. Sex... your idea. You know." He keeps saying that. Derek has no idea what he's talking about. "You still wanna _do it_ with me," Stiles finishes.

"Who _else_ would I want to do this with?" Derek asks, looking at him, all broad shoulders and peachy skin. He doesn't realize until Stiles mockingly _awww_ s at him what his comment sounds like. He hastily tacks on, "Would you rather I called an escort?" but Stiles doesn't buy it.

"Busted: you love me," Stiles tells him. "You adore me. You think—don't make that face, you probably think my eyes are like glittering stars or some shit—" He dodges Derek's grab. "My lips, like dew-moist rose petals—" He laughs, deep and cocky, when Derek snatches him up and drags him to the bed. "Ow, _fuck_ , no _claws_ —It's my birthday! Dude!"

::

Stiles grimaces, pinched, when he steps into the bedroom. "Wha— _what_ ," he grits out, "is that smell."

Derek stares at him. There's no smell out of the ordinary that Derek can pinpoint; but it's always possible Stiles can see the forest when Derek's in the trees; he sniffs the air. Dust, obviously—Derek hates the vacuum cleaner; sleep; a sense of lowkey excitement bubbling in Stiles so that the emotion's in whisps in every corner; Derek finds some remnant of the last time they had sex; he finds the floor cleaner; he smells the cat, of course—whose idea was the cat? There's a candle that Stiles lit once for romantic atmosphere, but it didn't come with a jar and is just sitting on a tea dish, and Derek couldn't relax after while there was a tiny open fire in the room—shampoo, deodorant, some wrinkled cash in one of Stiles' pockets in the hamper— "What?" Derek finally asks. It's too broad a question. "What smell?"

"Oh my _god_ , it's like _oranges_ from _hell_ ," Stiles grinds out, stepping back into the hallway with a hand over his nose. "I'm gonna hurl, dude, you gotta—you gotta—I've been smelling it but it's _worse_ and I can't _breathe_ and you gotta replace the house, I dunno, don' care, here's oranges from _hell_ in here and I'm—"

Oh. Oh, oh. "I cleaned the floors today," Derek tells him, depleted.

It dawns on Stiles, but he doesn't seem pleased by the understanding; if anything, knowing what it is just makes him angry. He's never liked the floor cleaner, but it puts a specific, waxy shine to the hardwood, and Derek finds the smell comforting. Stiles clenches his jaw, pinches his nose shut. If he was a werewolf, his eyes would glow. Maybe they're glowing anyway. He says, teeth grit, sounding demonic, " _Deber use Oradge-Glo agaid_."

::

On his drowsy trek from the kitchen sink to the coffee maker, Stiles sneezes hard enough to drop the coffee pot in his hands and watch it shatter on the kitchen floor. "Oh," he says, peering about, stranded in the middle of the kitchen. "Oh, no. O-oh, jesus." The floor is absolutely _covered_ with various shards of glass in a pool of tepid tap water. Stiles' shins and calves are splattered with water and Stiles has frozen in place. They both stare in total shock. Finally, voice cracking, he says, "Uh, um. Derek?

"Yeah," says Derek numbly, ears still ringing from the sudden, loud noise.

"I, um. I'm barefoot. Can you, um. Grab me the paper towels, please."

It takes a moment to sink in that Stiles can't feasibly expect his feet to heal after walking on broken glass. The glass has permeated every inch of the kitchen, every corner, under the table. And Stiles, stranded in the middle, too trapped to even bend down and try to reach the disembodied handle to the coffee pot. Derek jumps up, bits of glass popping and crunching under the soles of his shoes, and reaches for Stiles.

"Dude. Dude, whoa," Stiles says. He holds up his hands, and Derek stops. "I'm Stiles," Stiles tells him. Derek stares. "Not paper towels. _Stiles_."

"I'd really rather get you out of this sea of shards of broken glass," Derek tells him, unimpressed. "Just come here—"

"Dude, no, it's fine, I can jump, or—"

"You can _what_? You're gonna _jump_ all the way across the kitchen. What're you, a _wind spirit_? C'mon—"

"—get to the—I can hop onto the counter, and—"

"Or you can let me _carry_ you."

"I don't need—"

Derek sighs, drops his head back for a long moment.

"What?"

"Stiles."

" _What_?"

" _Honey._ "

"Oh, my god."

"You _constantly_ ask me to carry you around and I _never_ want to do it, and the _one time_ I _offer_ it to you, you don't want it because you're gonna try to leap your pregnant ass onto the counter."

Stiles considers this, eyes narrowed, hands hovering in that defensive _I don't need help escaping from this inescapable danger_ pose. He scowls thoughtfully around at the mess on the floor, at the distance between him and the counter, and finally, at Derek's hands, still outstretched, waiting. "Okay, yeah," he concludes, reaching for Derek. "Save me."

Rolling his eyes, Derek sweeps Stiles off his feet with an _ungentle_ forearm to the crook of his knees. " _Whoa!_ " contributes Stiles. "Wow, um..." Derek jostles him a little, to get him to settle into Derek's arms. When he's all brittle like this he's more likely to get dropped. " _Ummm_ , this isn't, this isn't—what I—" But he does go a little limper, settles against Derek's chest. He still doesn't seem to know what to do with his hands: as Derek hefts him out of the room, his hands sort of hover pointlessly.

"This isn't what I mean," Stiles reiterates meekly, "when I tell you I want you to carry me."

"What, you want a piggyback ride?" asks Derek. He meant it caustically, but Stiles just nods, earnest. "No," says Derek. "This is easier."

Stiles is silent until Derek deposits him roughly onto the couch in a dewy, fertilized heap. " _God_ ," he exclaims, squirming until he manages to right himself. "Dickhead—"

"You're welcome," says Derek, standing over him and watching him struggle with some impassive amusement. 

"Oooh, _thank_ you," gushes Stiles, batting his eyes, "my _he_ ro."

"Uh huh." Derek returns to the kitchen, where, in fact, they have one paper towel left.

::

"It's _started_. My favorite jeans don't fit anymore," Stiles tells Derek sullenly over the phone. "All my other jeans were dirty, so I had to wear khakis."

"You _like_ wearing khakis," Derek tells him.

"No, I _don't_ ," Stiles insists.

"You like khakis, you're just afraid of looking like a book nerd."

"It's a _legitimate concern_ ," Stiles bursts out. "I already wear lots of plaid and argyle. Work in a bookstore. I sell—Derek, I sell coffee." He pauses. Then he adds, "And I still—"

"—read Catcher in the Rye on your lunch break?"

"No," Stiles snaps. "You don't know _anything_." He's probably stuffing it under the register as they speak. "I meant I still sort of, you know, talk too much when I recommend things."

"Well, you've only read half the store," says Derek, idly making claws. "Maybe if you stopped wearing stupid graphic t-shirts."

"This one's space invaders," Stiles replies happily. "And it—you know what, you don't care."

"True."

"Listen."

"What."

" _Listen_."

" _What_?" Aggravated.

"I feel—" Stiles cuts himself off.

"What." Softer.

"Maybe it's just my imagination," Stiles addendums quickly. Derek rolls his eyes impatiently. "Sometimes—I think I feel something move. Just, just like a quick, a quick pull?" He pauses, and Derek, considering this, lets it stretch out lazily between them. "And I'm thinking," Stiles continues quietly, "I'm thinking about it? About him, or about her, or—them—" He drops to almost a whisper. "About our kid."

Derek sort of wants to reach through the phone and touch him, but he settles for trying to control his own breathing. Emotion overwhelms him suddenly. "I can't believe this is happening," he tells Stiles, hoarse, awed.

"Yeah." Stiles' voice is up in his throat. "I'm—oh… um, yeah, sorry. It—um, it won't be in until November. Um, yeah. Sorry," he directs at Derek. "I have a job and stuff."

"So you say," Derek says.

"Um, Derek?"

"Yeah."

Stiles sighs, long. "I… am so…" Tired, probably? Or hungry. "In love with you." Oh. Derek swallows. "You _know_ that, right? That I wouldn't be, that I wouldn't do this without you?" 

Shittily, childishly, Derek chooses to misinterpret that remark. He says, "That goes without saying."

Stiles doesn't let it happen. "Yeah," he says, somehow both firm and wavering at the same time. "It does." Derek doesn't know what to say to that; he just sits in it, consumed with frenzied, discomfited fondness. Thankfully, he waits long enough that Stiles gets distracted: he groans pitifully. "I just ate, but I'm _hungry_."

"I knew it," says Derek. "Order a pizza or something, you idiot."

"Okay. I'm eating for two," Stiles reminds him. "There's a living—a living, um—" Stiles fumbles the phone a little. " _In_ me, Derek, I'm—carrying it."

"I know."

" _God_."

"I know."

"This is sinking in," says Stiles. "Um, I have to go, um, work."

After he hangs up, Derek gives up on being awake for the day. He drags himself upstairs and lies on the bed, staring at the ceiling, for a long time. Until the sun starts to set.

::

"Stiles, for god's sake, it's five in the morning," Derek grumbles against the pillow he's holding to his face.

Stiles does not climb off of Derek. "Wow, _thanks_ , Father Time. I _know_ what time it is and you're gonna miss the sunrise. Don't you wanna look at the sunrise with me?"

 _What_? " _No_."

"Yeah, you do. Come on."

"I don't _want_ to."

"You _love_ this shit, why are you doing this?"

"I'm _sleeping_ , Stiles."

Stiles is silent for a moment. Then he says, "I could make it worth your while."

Derek takes the pillow off his face to glare at Stiles. "Are you _seriously_ trying to _seduce_ me into looking at the _sunrise_ with you? What, are you gonna fuck me at daybreak?"

Stiles grins, small and hopeful. "I could, if that's what you want."

Derek puts the pillow back on his face. Then he grunts, "Get off me," and shoves Stiles onto the bed next to him.

"You are the light of my life," Stiles calls from the duvet as Derek lumbers into the bathroom to pee.

:

" _Fuck_ , it's cold," Stiles decides right as the first rays of sunlight peek up over the horizon. He shivers, arms wound tightly around himself. Shudders against the Jeep, against Derek. "Holy _shit_. It was ninety-six degrees yesterday, how can it cool down this much overnight? This isn't natural, I—"

Humming judgmentally, Derek reaches in the window, pulls the thermos from the cupholder. Stiles stares at it, dumbfounded, even after Derek's pushed it into his hands.

"You brought _coffee_?" Stiles exclaims in the tone of voice Derek might have expected him to use if Derek had cured cancer. Derek hums again. "You brought me _coffee_."

"Heard I was light of your life," says Derek, pushing his arm around Stiles' waist. "Thought I'd live up to the title."

Stiles takes a swallow of coffee and sighs. " _Mmm_ , you really are."

The sunrise is very pretty, but Stiles ruins it by whining that he's hungry.

::

When the air conditioner breaks and Derek doesn't know how to fix it, who to call to fix it, Stiles groans, rolls his eyes. "What Is Adulthood And How Do I Eat It: an autobiography by Derek," he says, walking away, fanning himself with the dinosaur placemat that came in the sheriff's cardboard box.

"What does that even _mean_?" Derek snaps, and Stiles flails his hands around before turning to face him again.

"It _means_ that you don't know how to do _anything_ , and once _again_ it is up to me to figure out how to do this." He checks his watch. "Shit. And I'm late. I'll call someone on my lunch break."

:

Derek never did this stuff when he and Laura lived together. Laura always did.

The thing is, Derek's older now than Laura was when she took off with Derek. She was eighteen years old. She hadn't even graduated high school yet. The fact that Derek is stunted like this is entirely his fault.

He does a clumsy job of cleaning the kitchen, and finds minuscule bits of glass in the corners from his last clumsy job of cleaning the kitchen. Then he scrubs the sweat off his forehead with his arm for about the thousandth time.

:

Stiles worked the afternoon that day, so it's late when he gets home. Derek hears the Jeep.

"Fuck," Stiles groans when he comes in the bedroom door. "Shit." He sheds bits of clothing on his way to the bed, collapses facefirst onto the mattress, and squirms his way indelicately to Derek. "Terrible day," he's saying meanwhile. "Awful, bad, no-good day. Long, bad day."

Derek slides an arm around him. "How was your day?" he deadpans.

Stiles is too miserable for sarcasm. "Horrible," he answers wearily. "I was late. Jenna was so pissed. I spilled coffee on my unicorn t-shirt. This asshole tried to return water-damaged books and he yelled and knocked over my pencil cup. I worked through lunch, didn't get to call the repair guy until like four, so she isn't coming until Thursday. It was a million and a half degrees Celsius and someone dented my Jeep." He sighs. "And I missed you."

"You saw me this morning," Derek reminds him.

"I missed you, loser," says Stiles. He fidgets his way under the covers and against Derek, warm and grounding. "You're the easiest thing in my life."

"Easy," Derek repeats. "If I'm so easy, why'd it take you five years to wear me down?"

"Ha," Stiles says, poking Derek. "Ha, ha. Comedic explosion up in the Hale house."

Derek considers that for a second. Then, after a moment of calculation, he digs his blunt fingertips into Stiles' ribs. Predictably, Stiles jolts and yelps like a puppy whose tail got stepped on. " _Seriously_?"

"I'm dead serious," answers Derek soberly, doing it again.

" _God_ ," hollers Stiles. He's laughing, totally against his will. " _Stop_. Is this revenge? Are you getting ba- _hack_ at me for acting like a dick this morning? _Fuck_!"

"Yes." Stiles can't get much over on him, physically speaking, so he settles for punching Derek in the shoulder as hard as he can. He's stronger than he looks; Derek actually feels it bruise a little.

"Give me liberty or give me _death_ ," snaps Stiles, kicking uselessly at Derek under the sheets.

"That can be arranged," says Derek, rearing his claws back. It's a threat Stiles doesn't take remotely seriously. Derek doesn't blame him. He releases him, but Stiles doesn't move back. If anything, he snuggles closer.

"I was an asshole this morning," Stiles points out.

He looks exhausted, now that Derek's getting a good look at him—and it's not just because Derek was just tormenting him. It's hard to say whether there is indeed a coffee stain on his _My Other Ride Is A Unicorn_ shirt; the thing's black, after all. But there is a bruise on Stiles' wrist that wasn't there this morning, and something needy in the way he's pressed his lips together. "Yeah," Derek says presently. "You were."

"Fuck _off_ , I'm _serious_ ," Stiles insists. He pushes over and puts his head on Derek's chest: a way to cuddle without sharing too much body heat. "I was pissed off and overheated and _super barfy_ and I said douchebag things that weren't true."

"Barfy?" repeats Derek skeptically.

Stiles ignores him. "I would—listen. Are you listening?" Derek can't imagine it's possible not to listen to Stiles. He's just… interesting. He's also obnoxious, but the two aren't mutually exclusive. Derek doesn't point this out. Stiles goes on, "I would live through a thousand scorchers with you, before I would spend a single day in an air-conditioned building without you."

Derek says, "You just got back from a day in an air-conditioned building without me."

" _Yeah_ ," says Stiles argumentatively, "and it _sucked_!" Derek snorts, shakes his head. It isn't that Stiles is amusing, it's that Derek is very tired, and probably has Stockholm Syndrome or something. "I'm serious," Stiles says again, softer. "I've been dwelling on it, like, all day. You're kind of awesome, and I don't get to lash out at you just because I might projectile vomit at any second."

"Take your Dramamine," says Derek irritably.

"Oh. Right." Stiles worms back over to his side of the bed to retrieve his medicine; he brings it back to Derek, because his nails are never long enough to use to break the blister pack open. "See?" he asks after Derek's clawed him out a couple tablets. "Look at this. You deserve _so much_. Like, roses, and champagne and shit. I'm gonna marry you. I mean, again."

"Stiles," says Derek, watching Stiles blissfully chew up his Dramamine. "Just say thank you and go to sleep."

"Love you," says Stiles instead.

Derek was always the one that fixed the car. Laura didn't have a clue how to do that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jenna is Stiles' co-owner of the bookstore/coffee shop. 
> 
> They are both supremely overworked, and looking to hire some night managers in anticipation of Stiles having the kid. 
> 
> Jenna is also human and doesn't know Stiles is literally having a kid. 
> 
> They aren't close friends.


	7. nothing happens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sex, taking your home for granted, family, and more.

Stiles smells good. This isn't news. Derek's been nigh-constantly aware of it since this one horrible day he had a few years ago when his sister turned up dead and then a couple teenagers showed up on his property looking for her corpse. Stiles smells like a food he doesn't want to eat. On a bad day, it's pleasant, soothing; on a good day, he wants to surround himself with it like a blanket and never leave it.

Waking up in bed with Stiles is always a delight, all sleep-warm, cotton, comfort, Stiles' scent like there's been nothing but that spread out in Derek's bed for hours. He turns over early in the morning, slides a hand across Stiles' waist, presses a kiss against his shoulder blade—just to see if he's awake. Stiles mumbles sleepily, which Derek takes as an invitation to keep doing it. Just real light, leading up to his neck. He's not sure what it is about late mornings—maybe something about the angle of the sun, or Derek's circadian rhythms—but for whatever reason, Derek wants lazy sex at approximately ten in the morning on the regular. Typically he has to settle for masturbating in the shower, but if he's got Stiles, he's gonna go for it. "Mmderek," Stiles directs incoherently into the pillow. Derek puts his hand up Stiles' shirt, and when his palm flattens on his stomach, Stiles twitches and takes in a sharp breath. "Derek," he says warningly, now much more awake.

Derek pauses. "Yeah."

So abruptly that Derek startles back, Stiles turns over, fisting his hands in Derek's shirt. "Derek," he says, eyes wide, "unless you're intending to fuck me so hard I can't walk anymore, I suggest you stop doing that _right now_." He slowly pushes Derek onto his back, looms up over him, while Derek gapes. He looks _deranged_. "Okay?"

"Uh," Derek articulates. For all his body is reacting, his mind is still full of sleep-cobwebs. He blinks grittily and asks, "You want me to?"

Teeth grit, intense, Stiles growls, " _Yes_ ," and with the word, his eyes flash a vibrant blue.

Derek's never gone from 0 to 100 so fast in his life. "Jesus _christ_ ," he says.

 ::

 "Your eyes _flashed_?" Deaton repeats, and Stiles nods, kicking his heels as he sits on the examination table. He sheepishly says something else, but next to Derek, a dog has begun to howl at him, and Derek misses it. He glares at the dog to silence it so he can hear the conversation from the waiting area. Trying to read lips through a one-foot, cloudy window in a swinging door isn't proving very fruitful. "What color?" asks Deaton, and Derek hears paper pages flipping and the scribble of a pen. 

"Uh," Stiles scratches his cheek uncomfortably. "Blue, I think? He said blue."

"Blue," repeats Deaton. "Hmm..." The writing continues. Presently Deaton continues, "And... what were you doing when it happened?"

Immediately, Derek winces a little, and Stiles must have done something similar because Deaton laughs.

 "Oh," he says. "I see."

"Laugh it up, doc," says Stiles, humiliated.

"Of course. I didn't mean to, um... offend you." He's still plainly amused. Stiles huffs a sigh and rubs his face with one hand. "Is... that... bothering you?"

"It's _fine_ ," says Stiles grudgingly. "I guess I'll just be a freak in, like, every arena of my life. It's fine."

"A freak?" repeats Deaton. "Oh, no. It's not, it's typical marital behavior, I'm not..."

"Right, for those who aren't in, uh, a delicate condition, or whatever it's, uh..."

"Oh," says Deaton, sort of halfway realizing something. "Oh. Stiles, no, that's... it's not, it's perfectly fine. A, uh… _surge_ in this kind of desire is... It's par for the course with all the hormones rushing through you."

Derek can see Stiles lift his head, face screwed up in suspicious wonder. " _Seriously_?" he exclaims. "But—but Jenna said she could hardly stand Greg _touching_ her when she was carrying Katie." Deaton is nodding placatingly. "She said he tried to feel her up while she was doing some stretches and she, like, _donkey kicked_ him. She had to, like, sleep on the _couch_. I haven't slept on the couch in—if _he_ tried to—I mean—"

"It's different for everyone, Stiles," Deaton assures him.

"It's different," Stiles repeats to himself. "It's different! I'm not—ohhh, my god." He laughs once in relief, rubbing the back of his neck. "This is—I thought there was something _wrong_ with me. Like I was _doing pregnancy wrong_ or something."

"I see," says Deaton. A new dog has arrived, and Derek has to tell this one to shut up also; all the same, he misses whatever short response Stiles adds. "—been distressing you?" Deaton is asking.

Stiles doesn't answer for a second. Derek watches him duck his head awkwardly, probably gnawing on his thumbnail again. His voice cracks when he tries, "Well?" Then he goes a little still, and he says huskily, "I've been _wanting_ him like I want _air_."

 Derek breaks into a coughing fit. A yorkie growls at him. Deaton nods and writes something in his notebook.

 ::

Derek stumbles around the bedroom, blearily tossing things into a small, beat-up duffle, the bag he took with him when he returned to Beacon Hills. It was supposed to be a quick trip, a week at most. Here he still is. He can't really place why that is, right now; his mind's fogged up. He makes himself focus: sighing pensively, he drags a sweater into the bag.

Stiles, who is always up this early, snatches it out of the bag. "Dude, that's mine," he's saying.

Derek considers this. He shrugs, and replaces it with one that's probably his.

"So's that." Okay, so it isn't. Derek stares at it. "You can take it. It's already stretched out. Just don't get any puke or blood on there, I _like_ that sweater." Derek agrees to these terms. Stiles turns toward the mirror bolted to the back of the door and takes a speculative bite from his granola bar. "Do I look okay?" he asks. "Like, can people tell?"

Can they tell _what_? Derek gazes at him. He looks warm and soft. Derek should be packing; it's not time for hugs. "I dunno," he says.

"You don't _know_."

"Stop. Put... it." Nope. He doesn't know. He gives up.

"Jesus _christ_ , you're useless in the morning," Stiles decides. "No wonder you never used to sleep. Forget it, champ. Do you have socks?" Socks, right. Derek opens the sock drawer and begins plucking out pairs of socks. He continues until Stiles comes over and shuts the drawer. "You're gonna be gone for two weeks, not two years. My god. Take up drinking coffee," he says. "But not now. Boyd's out front."

Derek zips the bag shut and pats his pockets. Phone, wallet, keys. Satisfied, he starts to head to the door with it, but Stiles grabs his arm.

"Are you _seriously_ trying to leave without bestowing the obligatory marital goodbye kiss?" he demands. Derek nods, and bestows: once, twice. "Okay, adequate," Stiles judges. Derek rolls his eyes and leaves. "Don't look so glum, chum," Stiles calls after him, standing at the top of the stairs. "Maybe she'll be chill! I mean, she's related to you, but you're chill _some_ times."

Derek grunts, but otherwise ignores him.

::

It's two weeks and fifteen hours later that Derek returns, weary and pissed off. All the same, triumphantly stowed in his bag is his mother's worn bestiary. It's in some kind of pictographic language that he can't decipher, but he knows some people he can call, and if all else fails, Stiles' friend Lydia recently moved back to California to pursue some master's program at Cal Tech.

His alleged second cousin turned out to be a paranoid hermit, who required proof that he really was Talia's kid, a week to "think about it," and then a significant bailout from a loan shark to let him have the bestiary. It was in the middle of Cousin Clary's deliberation week that Derek discovered he's allergic to celery. _Allergic to celery_. Who's allergic to _celery_? What _werewolf_ has such a random food allergy? And here's Derek, closer to thirty than twenty, and he had no idea he was allergic to goddamn celery. He still has a hive on his forearm that won't go away, and Boyd laughed at him. He actually _laughed_ at him. The man laughs all of twice a year, and he chooses _this_ to laugh at.

Derek angrily lets himself into their bedroom and the familiar scent of Stiles' soap, dryer sheets, the almond wood soap Derek now uses on the floor, their idiot cat—just the _smell_ of it unwinds him so completely that he almost has trouble staying on his feet. Not like the last two weeks never happened; just like turning on a light when you've been trying to read in the dark. Like a rush of relief so concentrated it leaves him drowsy and weak-kneed.

It's dark in the room, and at first he can't find Stiles: typically Stiles sprawls out, takes up two thirds of the bed, and snores. But the bed looks empty. It takes a second for Derek's eyes to adjust; finally, he spots Stiles on Derek's side of the bed, curled up tight on himself. His face is mostly pressed into the pillow. Derek considers shoving him back over to the correct side of the bed. Instead, he drops his bag on the floor where he's standing and makes his way into the bathroom.

He can't believe how much he had to pay some shithead named Tony. He guesses he doesn't know what Clary's been through; from what little she told him, he got the impression she met with a healthy dose of adversity, much the way he did. She didn't have a family fortune to fall back on, either. Still, eight thousand dollars, and it all had to be in twenties. It wasn't easy getting that kind of money that fast in a foreign city. Boyd made it easier, at least. Derek's hive itches.

Teeth brushed and pants abandoned, Derek slides gingerly into the bed behind Stiles. He takes a second to sink into the sheets and watch Stiles breathe, and feels tension slowly melt away from his shoulders and back. Tension he knew he was carrying; he guesses he just didn't know how much of it was there. Finally, he pushes his hands around Stiles' waist, slips up behind him, and gets as close as he physically can without actually fucking him or merging their bodies together like some fucked up cell absorption. He inhales at Stiles' neck, and feels the howeverlongitwasitfeltlikemonths finally dissipate. Therapeutical spooning. Stiles finally stirs, mumbles irritably. "Der'k?"

"Mm," Derek answers.

Stiles squirms ungracefully until he's on his back, squinting blearily at Derek in the dark. "Whenja get back," he croaks, grimacing with the effort to keep his eyes open. It's almost grotesque; the fondness Derek feels expanding in his chest is inexplicable, but all consuming.

"Two, three minutes. Go back to sleep, honey."

"Uh, _no_?" Stiles hooks a hand behind Derek's neck and kisses him—not deep, but claiming. Derek had heretofore been unaware he needed to be claimed, but it's a good feeling. He squeezes Stiles' ribs in his arms, just tight enough to make him squeak, and then breaks the kiss to knock their foreheads together and lean there. Stiles snorts. "Okay." Derek ate something. He was mad about something he ate, he recalls. Also money, there was money involved. Bank. Eight thousand dol— "How long were you gone again?" Stiles wonders, finally putting his hands on Derek's waist, his arm. "A month?"

Derek has to think about it. "Three—two weeks."

"Two decades?" 

"Weeks."

"Wow, Derek. Twenty years is a long time. You should try not staying gone that long, like, ever again."

"Yeah. Counting is hard."

"Two _millennia_. Ah, stop it, that tickles."

"Wha?"

"Biting me, that _tickles_. Quit it."

Derek hums boredly in response, but leaves Stiles' neck alone. He was mad about his cousin. His cousin had a bunch of money and gave him a book or something. It was a while ago; he can't really remember.

"Oh, guess what, dude, I'm gaining weight. Check me out." Stiles takes Derek's hand off the sharp slope of his forearm and pushes it under his t-shirt, onto his stomach. Derek peers down in surprise: it takes him a second to realize what he's touching. Stiles has swollen out a little there, molds to Derek's palm. Stiles sighs happily, holds Derek's hand there, as if there's any danger of him moving it. "I'm also getting love handles, I think. I'm always wearing sweater vests to work now. I'm sensitive about my physique, okay, I work hard on it."

"No, you don't," Derek says. It's true. Stiles isn't _inactive_ , he's just lazy. "You look good," he adds. He can't resist putting his forehead against Stiles' temple.

"Well, I _know that_ much," Stiles replies, and they lay there, intertwined. Presently Stiles starts to snore, and it's the most grating sound in the world, but Derek is distracted because he can't remember what he was upset about. He was gone or something; that must have been it.

What else could it have been?

The baby moves under Derek's palm. Derek wasn't upset about anything.

 


	8. on the strug

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Social pitfalls, all we do is fight, magic sex, and more.

There's spaghetti boiling in the kitchen and Derek's on the couch grimacing at a For Better or For Worse treasury when Stiles comes home from work. He stands in the doorway for a second: then, decision made, he whips his tie off and flings it across the room, stumbling out of his shoes, and flopping onto the couch with a piteous groan. Derek looks at him expectantly. Stiles stares at the ceiling for a long minute.

At length he volunteers glumly, "Jenna's started giving me nutritional advice."

Derek laughs. Apparently this wasn't the proper response. Derek doesn't care.

"Derek," calls Erica from the kitchen. "Or Stiles. Who cares. Where's the pepper?"

"She says I'm letting myself _go_. She said I'm, and I quote, 'wallowing,'" Stiles tells Derek, brandishing some waggle-wristed air quotes. They seem to take up an amount of energy, because he finally tosses a limp arm across his eyes and lies there.

Derek opens his mouth to respond, and then processes Erica's question. "Don't put shit in my sauce," he shouts back. She makes a sound that reminds Derek of a baby bear. He directs at Stiles, amused, "She thinks you're depressed." Stiles huffs a laugh, but otherwise doesn't move. Derek tries, "Maybe you _have_ let yourself go."

" _What_?" Stiles takes his arm off his eyes and looks at Derek. Then he squints. "Oh, you're an _asshole_." Derek has no objections. Stiles relaxes, but he doesn't try to cover his eyes again. "She keeps buying me _bran_ muffins."

"Are you eating them?"

Stiles ignores him. Of _course_ he eats them. The only thing he doesn't eat are oranges. "She thinks I should start taking my lunch break to jog," he goes on, sighing and leaning his head back. "And like, okay. _Maybe_ walking. But like," he adopts something of a whine, "my ankles are swollen." Derek plucks his feet up, puts them in his lap. Starts rubbing one of them. Stiles melts appreciatively.

"Just let me put two shakes of pepper in this," Erica begs from the doorway.

::

Every once in a while they get a foreigner traveling by, either a vacationer just passing through or someone sick coming to see the nematon or perhaps some kind of dignitary hoping to meet the true alpha. Ever since the news of the _saving of the kanima_ got out, Beacon Hills is well on its way to reaching the same level of legendary tourist trap as Transylvania; and it only got worse with every new bullshit thing that happened. Derek's generally lucky enough not to have to talk to them, but they do, from time to time, stop by the Hale house, surprised and disappointed that it's a functional building once again. Unfortunately for these copious visitors, it never occurs to them to be polite to Stiles.

This one rolls in while they're wandering around the preserve sometime after dinner. To the untrained eye, she just looks like your average hiker tourist, all performance sandals and a jacket with a shitton of pockets; though he's not sure what kind, Derek can tell she's a shifter. Once they've been introduced, and she discovers what Derek is and what Stiles is to him, she takes a second check: a slow look from Stiles' face down to his shoes and back again. Her eyes linger on his hand, twined with Derek's; his hooded jacket, zipped halfway up; his free hand, idly holding his phone. Instagram is still up on his screen: he's putting some weird filter over a photo of his feet. Stiles has noticed the blatant judgment in her eyes, and he takes his hand back from Derek and shoves both hands, phone and all, into his jacket pockets. He narrows his eyes, tilts his head confrontationally. 

" _You're_ his mate," she says incredulously. Maybe a little grossed out. An unspoken _you_ floats in the air between them.

Stiles scoffs. "Uh, _yeah_. Is that a _problem_?" She draws her head back a little, chin pressing into her neck. She glances at Derek, who provides no assistance to either of them. He's just enjoying the show. "And you know what?" Stiles goes on, leaning forward; "Who says I'm _his_ mate?" His head tosses a little with his words. "Maybe he's _mine_. What's your bullshit ownership criteria?" 

Derek has no idea what he's even talking about, but he says nothing. For one, as meaningless as _borders_ are these days, there _is_ merit in presenting a unified front. And for two, if she wants to pick a fight with Stiles, that's her _own_ prerogative. She deliberates, and ultimately seems to decide her only course of action would be violence, which she couldn't do without Derek retaliating. She takes a step back: good call. Her eyes dart to Derek's, and he can't help it, just cracks a grin. She just looks so _horrified_ , like she's just seen someone stick their hands in the communal hummus.

"Odd choice," she directs at Derek.

"My therapist and I are working on it," he says back.

::

" _I didn't ask for this_ ," Stiles says, enraged and puking again. Derek cringes and hides in the kitchen.

::

"Your ass looks _hot_ as _Hale_ ," Stiles says peevishly, abruptly behind Derek, and if there's one thing Derek hates about doing laundry, it's that he can't hear anything but the washing machine while he's in the basement; he didn't even hear Stiles on the creaky basement steps.

He snaps upright with a swear, clipping his head on the door to the dryer on his way up. Hissing, he presses his palm against his skull.

"Aw," Stiles says, laughing ruefully. "Sorry, baby. I didn't mean for you to give yourself a concussion." Derek glares at him, but Stiles holds up a finger. "You are well within your rights to be mad because you're hurt, but—"

" _Good_ , because I _am_ —"

"—but disclaimer: hey! Disclaimer! I'm gonna _fuck your shit up_ if you yell at me about sneaking up on you. You... you potential hypocrite."

Derek's mouth twists. He pulls his hand down, and there's some blood. Not enough to be concerned with. He wipes his palm on his jeans. "So what _am_ I allowed to yell at you for?"

Stiles grins at him, shuffles into his personal space, clearly hoping for a kiss or something. "Making a shitty Hale-hell pun for the… what is it? Third time this week?"

"I'm used to your shitty sense of humor, though," Derek deadpans.

Stiles raises his eyebrows. "Oooh. Not the way to go if you want me to kiss your booboo."

Derek socks him in the arm.

::

Stiles comes home with a furrow in his brow on a Thursday and stands in the door to the kitchen, watching Derek shove ground beef around a skillet. He's barefoot, and generally Stiles would crack a joke about Derek barefoot and in the kitchen, but today he just watches, silent.

"Hi," Derek says, peering over at him. Scratching an itch on his calf with his toe.

"Hi," says Stiles softly.

He's anxious, and Derek doesn't know what to do with Stiles' anxiety. It pops up sometimes, and Derek can taste it on the air, thick and cloying like cheap perfume. Stiles anxious isn't like Stiles, and Derek wishes he were better with words or emotions or relationships so he could fix it. Turn off the nerves like a switch. Something is wrong, is the point, and Derek just stiffens in front of the stove, waiting for Stiles to say it, to tell Derek how he's fucked this up, what they're going to fight about now.

When Stiles does speak, Derek feels a quick flicker of anxiety and rage: but it's only, "Wanna go out with me?" Derek—doesn't know how to react. He opens his mouth, frowns. He irritably looks at the sizzling meat. "I mean tomorrow night," Stiles is quick to clarify. " _Tomorrow_ do you want to. Go out." He pauses, nibbling idly on his lip. "With me."

"Uh... Okay," Derek says, drawing the word out a little bit. Stiles waits a beat, and then smiles. It's uncomfortable.

He has his dinner on the couch in front of a DVR recording of Divorce Court, with Derek supervising nervously from the kitchen.

::

Stiles disappears to work before Derek wakes up, so Derek spends the entire day on edge and distracting himself. Drolly enough, he gets a lot more done today: he finally gets the blinds untangled in the nursery, and fixes a broken hinge on the door to the hall bath. He doesn't think the mirrors have _ever_ been this clean. By the time he's cleaned out the fridge and finally unpacked the new rug Stiles bought on Amazon, he's pretty sure he imagined the discomfort of last night. Then Stiles gets home late, and Derek remembers. "Uh," says Stiles, fidgeting with his horrible sweater vest. "I'll, uh... Change, um, my shoes." 

They are going to the movies, Stiles tells him awkwardly, and Derek instinctively grouses, "Seriously?" 

Stiles starts to sneer and say something shitty, but Derek sees him catch himself. He pauses, decides on something else to say. "Umm, yeah," is what he comes up with. 

Derek finds himself alarmed by the silence. The uncomfortable quiet is a tangible pressure, and Derek doesn't appreciate it. He hates this passive-aggressive bullshit. He wants to drag whatever's going on out of Stiles, but Stiles isn't half as stubborn as Derek is, and if Derek pries, he will confess. And if Derek's honest, he sort of doesn't _want_ to know how he fucked up. He wants to live in this miserable, stifling, Schroedinger's breakup.

"Ooh, popcorn," Stiles says absently once they get tickets to some kinda shit with that Titanic guy in it, and Derek rolls his eyes, because this is a conversation they have every time they go to the movies. Every time they talk about the movies. Every time a situation that tangentially involves popcorn is mentioned, they have this conversation.

"If you get popcorn," Derek begins, and Stiles narrows his eyes. But he stops again. 

This time there is no plausible deniability. The quiet is _deliberate_ , and the impulse to push until it pops like an overinflated water balloon is difficult to suppress. "I'll, uhh... meet you in there," says Stiles. Then, eyes bright, he opens his mouth, draws in a breath to say something else; just as quickly, he snaps his mouth shut, doesn't say anything. He belatedly, nervously gives Derek that same small, empty smile. 

Derek's frightened, suddenly, faced with the prospect of this new life he's only just started to build shattering on him, shambling unceremoniously down like a pathetic lincoln log creation. He feels himself frown at Stiles, and Stiles just stares placidly back at him. Mechanically, numbly, Derek heads into the theater, about thirty percent sure he's breaking the laws of lycanthropy and having a heart attack.

It's just that Stiles never gives the silent treatment; and if he did, he wouldn't be able to feign civility this long. If he _is_ mad enough at Derek to make a production out of it, Derek has no idea what it could be _about_. He wonders at it, and once he starts, he can't stop. He's so distracted running through and around his mind, trying to summon up shit he could've done that would lead Stiles to ending a relationship he _literally just_ made permanent, that he doesn't even really notice that Stiles doesn't come in until the opening credits are rolling. All Derek can come up with is petty bullshit like Derek forgetting to fix the showerhead, or leaving the leftover spaghetti in the fridge for too long. The panic makes it impossible to focus on the movie—something about a horse? If you quizzed him on it, he'd fail, just like he's apparently failed in his marriage. 

The fear is wholly irrational, but Derek can't find any logical barrier to stop him from panicking in the middle of a theater. The only thing that keeps him rooted firmly in reality is the fact that Stiles—Stiles has popcorn. Derek loathes popcorn, because it drowns out the movie, and Stiles _knows_ it. The fact that not even false affability can repress Stiles' instinct to be a dickweed is comforting in a weird way: it just takes Derek's boundless fear and focuses it on the rest of the evening. This is so unignorably uncomfortable that one way or another, Stiles is gonna fess up tonight. Derek settles in to wait this stupid movie out, with the sounds of Stiles' illicit popcorn crunching in his ears.

::

Derek is bouncing his knee in his seat at dinner like a kid in the principal's office. He's trying to prevent his mind from tripping down speculation street; and he's trying to figure out _exactly_ how far his paranoia extends, which parts of what he's experiencing are true and which are extrapolations he's drawn himself to in his mind: is Stiles even _really_ putting on some strange act, or is he just feeling tired this week, and Derek's projecting? Derek wouldn't be Derek if he wasn't second-guessing himself. He looks across the table now. Stiles is staring at his eggplant parm as if it's the most interesting thing in the world. He clears his throat and asks Derek, without making eye contact, "Uh, how's your pasta?"

Derek loses his patience. "All right," he snaps, smacking his fork down onto the tablecloth. "What did I do."

He knows he sounds manic. Almost furious. Stiles is finally looking at his face, nakedly shocked. "What did you _what_?"

" _Do_ , Stiles," Derek tells him roughly. "What did I _do_. You're acting like a mannequin and I want to know what I did, _now_."

There is a pause. Stiles' eyebrows twitch, like they aren't entirely sure what emotion to convey—like there's too many to choose from. They settle on bewildered. "Why would you think you did something? Did you _do_ something?"

Derek tosses his hands up. " _I_ don't know! Why else would I be _asking_?"

"I—" Stiles cuts himself off. He frowns, perplexed, at his plate. 

" _No_ ," Derek practically growls. " _Don't_ clam up again. Tell me why you're mad. I know something's wrong, and I don't wanna play this _sitcom bullshit_ with you. I know it's not—" Something occurs to him. "Did I forget a date? Did I forget an important date?" That would explain the going out. The uncomfortable, expectant, almost longing stares. "We haven't even been married a year, it's not our anniversary. Your birthday is next month. Mine's passed." He looks at Stiles, who is staring at him, dumbfounded. "Is it Scott's? Isn't it in September?"

"Oh my _god_ ," Stiles groans, dropping his face into one hand. " _Shit_. I should have known you'd—fuck, Derek, you didn't _do anything_."

Derek deflates like a pool floatie with a hole in it. He thumps back against the back of his chair. His heart beats firmly, and he revels in the fact that he didn't do anything. The relief floats around him, and then swirls downward like water going down a drain. With it gone, all that's left is bizarre anger. He leans back forward. "Then what the _hell_ is the _matter_ with you."

Stiles makes a noise like a petulant toddler—shit, the kid's not even born yet and Derek's surrounded by whining—and tosses his napkin onto the table. For a second, Derek thinks he's gonna leave, but then he leans forward on his elbows. "Okay, look," he says, wincing—probably at the whole situation. "I just—I had tea with Lydia on my lunch break yesterday."

"Tea with Lydia," Derek repeats, deadpan.

" _Yeah_ ," Stiles says, sneering. "Tea with Lydia." He sighs, scrubs a hand through his hair. "Anyway, she says we fight all the time." They're silent for a moment.

"Wonder where she got _that_ idea," Derek says. Stiles rolls his eyes. "So?"

"So what?"

"Right. So _what_."

" _So_ , we're having a _kid_ , Derek."

Derek takes a sip from his water. "At the risk of sounding redundant, _so_?"

Stiles narrows his eyes suspiciously. Derek stares back. "So?" says Stiles. "You don't think we argue too much? Lydia says—Lydia says what if it's a bad environment, for, for the _baby_?"

"A _bad environment_?" parrots Derek incredulously. 

"Uh, _yeah_! A bad environment! God forbid I worry about the _emotional well-being_ of my _actual child_!" Stiles has shoved his plate over to the side so he can lean forward and continue this argument in harsh whispers without dipping his tie in the sauce. "If being surrounded by sniping all the time is gonna screw him up in the head, I'd like to curb it before he exists! Jesus!"

"If the kid's related to _me_ , they'll _like_ it when you bitch and moan and not even know _why_ ," Derek says flippantly, poking at his food with his fork like if he jabs at it enough, it'll come awake and solve all their problems. It takes him a moment to realize Stiles has gone quiet. Jesus christ. _Again_? He looks up, exasperated.

He finds Stiles blinking at him, a little mystified. "You, um." He clears his throat, tries again lower. "You like it when I talk? I mean, I don't annoy you?"

Derek narrows his eyes, shakes his head. Why else would he still _be_ here if not because he _likes Stiles_? He's certainly not sticking around for his money or his taste in home décor. Shit, how long have they been together? Did Stiles think Derek's been putting _up_ with him this whole time? Why would he think _that_? Unless— "Do _I_ annoy _you_?" he asks stiffly, because if Stiles says yes, he won't be surprised, but he'll probably take a hit to his self esteem regardless.

" _God_ , no," Stiles says breathlessly. "I could listen to you complain for _hours_. Even if it's about golf."

"It's like watching _rich paint_ dry, I don't know why you watch it," Derek snaps.

"Oh," Stiles says, a slanted grin spreading on his face. "Oh, yeah, we need the cheque. We need the cheque _now_ , where's the waiter?"

::

"Why are we even doing this _here_? We could just go _home_ , for god's sa—"

"Shut up and put your dick in me or we're calling this off and I'm going back to being quiet," Stiles snaps. He leers over his shoulder. "I know you hate that," he says smugly, and Derek scowls. Puts his hand on the back of Stiles' neck and pushes him down so his ass comes up. " _Aah_ —Derek, you _—fuck_ —"

"I'm _gonna_ , if you'll shut _up_ for a second," Derek says. Cock sufficiently lubricated, he tosses the emptied packet onto the floor.

"You're pickin' that up later," Stiles says, like this is his damn car, and then, " _Oh_ , god, fucking— _fuck_ —" as Derek opens him up with his thumbs. " _Oh_ , wow."

"Too much?" Derek asks, breath labored. He lines himself up, and then wraps a fist around the base of his dick. Stiles can't speak, but he kind of groans vaguely and shakes his head. Pushes his hips back and up and whines needily. "Wait," Derek croons, and then pushes in, and Stiles gasps obscenely.

Derek doesn't particularly like fucking in the Camaro because there's roughly a quarter inch of room in the back seat—Derek is balancing precariously, his foot is crammed under the passenger's seat, and Stiles is bent up on himself like a transformer—but Stiles has a weird, secret exhibitionist kink ("I am _not_ an _exhibitionist_ ," he insisted vehemently after the first time he blew Derek in a restaurant bathroom. Derek rolled his eyes, said, "Sure, _babe_ ," and Stiles socked him in the arm hard enough that he bruised for a second) and Derek mostly gets off on _Stiles_ getting off. In any case, he couldn't really wait any longer. The need to get their hands on each other was sort of—palpable.

So he fucks Stiles just how he likes to be fucked, hard and fast and a little too passionate for the setting. Stiles scrabbles mindlessly at the window in front of him. He grabs the door handle (Derek spares a thought to be grateful the thing's locked), gasps wretchedly, breaths dragged from deep within him, fingers and toes clenching and unclenching like he's trying to _knead_. "Shhh _it_ ," he says, "Derek, do me _harder_ or so help me god I'll—"

Derek never finds out what Stiles is planning to do if Derek doesn't do him harder, because he _does him harder_ , snapping his hips in sharply enough that Stiles _howls_ , pressing his forehead against the window, and Derek can see his eyes flashing electric blue in the reflection in the glass. Somehow—somehow that rears something up in him, a part of his wolf that he normally doesn't even pay any attention to, a part of him that _screams_ for Stiles, to _own_ him—

When he comes, he yells loud enough that Stiles gets goosebumps and comes himself.

::

They stumble out of the Camaro, sweaty and sticky and fumbling their jeans back on, and Stiles slams the door shut with a smirk. They lean against the side of the car and stare up at the stars, deeply satiated, arms pressed together.

"So, uh," Derek says eventually. "We can keep arguing, right?"

"Yes, please," Stiles says, rubbing at  his eyebrow with his thumb. "Jesus, it was _awful_ , I literally stayed outside the theater until the trailers were over so that I wouldn't have to make myself not talk to you. And with that shit _before_ the movie, it was damn near _impossible_."

"What shit."

"It was just really hard not to tell you."

"Tell me _what_?"

"The _truth_ ," says Stiles, eyebrows up. "Which is, you know, that your weird opinions on classic movie snacks make you into an asshole hipster douchebag with no appreciation for tradition."

He says it so _earnestly_. Derek wants to shove him down. "Listen to me, Stiles," he says. He's only gonna say this _once_. "Only elitist _drones_ keep eating clearly shitty food just because of some meaningless _ritual_ left over from the 30s." Stiles starts laughing incredulously. "Okay?"

"Did you seriously just call me a _drone_? Who _are_ you?"

"That's what you call people who do things without thinking about them," says Derek, but Stiles just laughs harder.

"Wake _up_ , sheeple!" he bellows to a disgruntled couple on the sidewalk. "Popcorn is a capitalist invention brought to us by the _Nazis_!"

"Shut the _fuck_ up," Derek grouses. "You're gonna get us asked to leave."

"Fuck the man, Derek."

"I already did, _Stiles_."

"Oooh, _very_ clever. Didja write that yourself, or did you get it off o' Reddit or something?"

::

They end up getting asked to leave not because they fucked wildly enough that the Camaro's windows rattled, not because Stiles is harassing strangers on their way to their cars, but because they stand there in the lot insulting each other long enough that someone accuses them of _loitering_. Derek can think of worse reasons to get kicked out of a private parking lot, even though Laura would never let Derek forget about it.


	9. ache, part i

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nesting, I can't process my emotions, and more.

Stiles' lethargy increases to the point where he crashes immediately after work and Derek must rouse him from the floor, or the couch, or his pile of pillows by the fireplace, and nag him to bed. It becomes a common scene, to walk into a room, turn on the lights, and find Stiles curled up into a ball somewhere, fast asleep.

The day Derek finds him snoring in a tepid bath, all the bubbles having long since popped and turned into a faintly psychedelic film on the surface of the water, is the last straw. As Derek looks at him, mind blank with disbelief, Stiles starts to slide slowly deeper, knees crooking. Derek is abruptly furious: he snatches up a large towel and snaps his fingers rapidly an inch away from Stiles' face. Stiles snorts awake.

"Come on," Derek says impatiently. "Outta the tub before you drown."

"M'not drown," Stiles rasps groggily, rubbing at his eyes with his slippery wrists. He manages a stunted ascent from the bath and into the towel Derek holds up for him.

Derek plants Stiles, towel and all, on the toilet seat, and then goes about draining the tub. "You've been dead on your feet for weeks," he says, plucking a sopping wet washcloth from the water. "I think it's about time you took some time off work."

Stiles pouts impressively. "I don't want to," he whines, looks angry with himself. "I'm just so tired, all the fucking time."

"Well, you're busy doing something pretty important," Derek replies calmly, and Stiles snorts.

"What. Contributing to overpopulation?"

"Expanding the Hale pack," says Derek without thinking.

Stiles' eyes are accentuated by dark circles, so they pop when they widen a fraction.

"Go get in bed," snaps Derek, and as he passes, Stiles kisses Derek's temple.

::

Of course, whenever Derek is trying to sleep, Stiles cannot. He shakes him awake at three in the morning sometime about a week later, and Derek rolls over with the world's most put-upon grumble. Looks at Stiles to see him sitting upright, hugging his knees as best as he can. "Our kid is going to have my ADHD," he tells Derek like he's warning him.

"You might sleep less during the day if you tried sleeping at night," Derek says, flat and gravelly.

Stiles looks at him, eyes open and empty. "He's gonna have concentration issues and excess energy," he goes on. "Problems in school and relating to other people and keeping his thoughts straight."

"You did fine in school," says Derek.

"I did fine in _high school_ , when I was medicated and running on guilt fumes, dude. I did fine in high school because I never slept. I was _miserable_ in high school."

Derek grunts. "Join the club."

Pain flickers across Stiles' face, and nothing can wake Derek up quite like remorse. He reaches over, takes Stiles in his arms, and pulls him to his chest. Holds him tight. "You hoping you can squeeze the mental disorder out of the fetus?" Stiles deadpans, but momentarily he slides his arms around Derek's middle.

They lie there in the dark until the faint, nervous tremors in Stiles' limbs fade into the dull limpness of sleep. Derek's frankly no more worried about their kid having ADHD than he is about their kid being a werewolf, which is to say, marginally, if at all.

"You're gonna have a kid who's at least half like _me_ ," Stiles mumbles drowsily.

"I _like_ you," Derek says defensively, and it's true. "Now shut up, you're driving me nuts." Also true.

::

One day Derek goes for a walk and ends up twenty miles out of town.

There was a time not too long ago when Derek was getting two hours of sleep a night on a bare mattress because there were people literally trying to kill him. (Not that no one wants him dead now. Just, he didn't have the backup he has now. And if it's too much for him and Scott to handle, there's always his second cousin Stevie, who lives down in San Luis Obispo with her husband Wyatt.)

There was Uncle Peter as the anonymous alpha, first, which happened to coincide with Derek's ex's ill-fated return to Beacon Hills, _that_ was pleasant, _not_.

 _Then_ there was the _kanima_ , which—in retrospect, there is no way to plan for a thing like that and no _possible_ way to explain how exactly it _happened_. Mostly Derek remembers a fight with Scott, and a pool.

There was Kate's fucked-shit _father_ , who— _who_ allowed that guy to reproduce? Stiles and Derek deserve a goddamn Nobel _Peace_ Prize compared to Gerard Argent.

The alpha pack came through, and if under interrogation by the sheriff, Derek to this _day_ could not for the life of him explain what exactly they wanted with him. Could use some _communication_ classes, the alpha pack. Plus side: Derek found a surplus sister in a bank vault.

There was the _thing, another_ of Derek's exes, and then the first ex happened _again_ —Derek's always had more bad luck than good when it came to dating. That whole period is kind of a blur, if Derek's honest, but he recalls nearly dying several times, and also being stuck in Stiles' bedroom, which sucked almost as much as the first time. Then a totally different ex appeared, the beginning of an upturn in that arena. After that, something else happened, Derek grew a cousin, then Derek left, and promptly happened to _explode in Ireland_. That was complicated. He came back to California after that.

Then Derek's actual apartment tried to kill him—his haunted loft was one of the driving forces behind Stiles' argument that he move back to the Hale house ("I swear to god, Der, we're moving in together this year, and it's going to be into a structure that isn't homi-fucking- _cidal_ , okay."). Took Derek six _months_ of blissful domestic peace before the nightmares of little, bleeding girls started to ebb.

After that, there—you know what, this is beside the point. The _point_ is, Derek has been impaled, lit on fire, chained up and electrocuted, driven on, possessed, poisoned, nearly drowned, kidnapped, stalked, stabbed, dragged, and nearly forced into magical marriage. Derek has experienced things that _still_ make him cringe. But this. This is different. _This_ is _terrifying_.

Those other things were tangible. Only Derek would experience the brunt of a misstep in those arenas (Stiles always has something negative and obnoxious to say about that, but Derek maintains he would get some therapy and move on, maybe marry his friend Lydia, maybe marry _Scott_ ). This is bigger than Derek. This is bigger than Stiles—and Stiles is pretty big right now. This is bigger than Derek's pack, than Derek's late pack, than Beacon Hills, than California. This is _an entire new life_ being built and rearranged and prepared, literally _inside of someone Derek loves_.

There is an infinite cache of ways this could go wrong, and Derek needs distance to grasp it all.

He sits on a curb outside a knick-knack shop near Red Bluff for an hour, and then Stiles pulls up in front of him in Scott's Honda. He watches Derek for a long few seconds, looking sweaty and tired, but otherwise calm and unpresuming. Derek gets in the car.

"You okay?" Stiles asks ten minutes later, on the way back to Beacon Hills. Derek nods minutely. "I tracked your phone," Stiles tells him, as if Derek asked. "I'd have been here sooner, but I _hate_ the Camaro, and it took me fifteen minutes to convince Scott I'm okay to drive in my 'condition' before he handed me the keys."

Derek smirks, sighs out a weak laugh. "He's like something out of the Victorian era with you."

"He _actually_ doesn't want me standing in front of the microwave," Stiles replies. "Everything I do, he's like, _whoa, whoa, you sure about that_ , and even _Melissa's_ like _you need to chill out_ , but he's always just like," Stiles adopts a voice that reminds Derek of Eeyore after getting therapy, " _I'm just anxious and want to make sure you're okay_ , and like, you ca—" Stiles sneezes. "—can't—" He sneezes again. "—can't tell a dude to fuck off when he's just trying to take care of you." Like that's ever stopped him when it comes to Derek. Or Dr. Deaton. "That time you were gone for that long weekend was just this veritable _circus_ of dodging Scott's motherly concern."

Huffing another laugh, Derek sinks deeper into the passenger's seat and lazily watches the mostly unimpressive scenery fly by. The car smells like Scott, deep in every pore of the neoprene upholstery—Derek loses himself for a moment in the familiar, but not too familiar, sensation. Then he chances a hand skittering to the gear shift, wraps his fingers around Stiles' knuckles. "I didn't know you hated the Camaro," he says, and Stiles scoffs.

"Fucking despise that thing. It—" Stiles looks at him, makes a weird hand-slice gesture. "It's like, it's like scooting around in a jumpy bullet. All right? And I can't figure out how to adjust the seat—" 

"Watch the road, genius."

Stiles jerks Scott's car away from the bike lane. "I can't fit behind the wheel very well, man, it's a _problem_."

After a long while weaving around on the spindly road, Derek says, "I'll trade in the Lincoln for something else, then. You can have that."

"I'm not taking your car, dude," Stiles sighs.

"You are if I make you take it."

"Oh, my god," Stiles laughs a little, looking at him. "Wow. Fine, christ. But, listen." He's pointing, glancing quickly between the road and Derek. "If you get me a minivan, so help you—"

::

Derek's cleaning up cat puke—the crumbly kind that comes from a feline moron who eats too quickly—when his phone starts to ring. He tries to fumble it out of his pocket one-handed, without dropping any of the puke out of the paper towel. He fails. "What," he grunts angrily into the phone. 

"Hey." It's Stiles. Derek stops what he's doing, tries to figure out what's going on. Stiles is supposed to be napping upstairs. "Um, how's it going?"

His voice is gravelly and weak, like he's just woken up. Derek decides there's only a sixty percent chance he's actually awake right now. It wouldn't be the first phone call he's placed to Derek in his sleep. "Do you need something."

"Hadda question."

Jesus. Sometimes Stiles wonders something stupid, and for whatever reason he can't be fucked to google it. Why should he, when he can just harass Derek at all hours? He once claimed to Derek that the experience of talking to people is a dying art; but Derek knows without a shadow of a doubt he's bullshitting. No one loves Wikipedia as much as Stiles Stilinski. "Is it _why am I like this_?" Stiles chuckles sleepily. "Jury's still out." Stiles sighs, a long and contented hum like he'll slide right back into sleep in a second. "What," says Derek, apparently unable to let it lie. He wants to know what the question was: he knows it'll be stupid, that it won't be worth hearing, but he wants to know it all the same. 

"Hm?"

"What was your _question_ , smartass."

"Oh. Yeah. It was: if I said I wanted your body, would you hold it against me?"

Derek shuts his eyes and lets out a long and cleansing breath. His aunt used to pinch the bridge of her nose and say, _Lord, give me strength here on this day_. He's banned himself from hanging up on Stiles, in case he actually needs something and just needs to be annoying for a while to get around to it; but it's a real challenge. "Really?" he finally summons from some angelic reservoir of tolerance within him. "Britney Spears lyrics?"

"It's Stiles, bitch," answers Stiles. It's so obnoxious and predictable that Derek could have said the words along with him: and yet, somehow, Derek's still dumbfounded and enraged. 

"Stiles," says Derek. Stiles is still chuckling to himself over his incredibly witty _it's Stiles_ line. "You're sleeptalking, so you can't possibly know how moronic you sound," Derek tells him patiently. 

"I'm actually pretty aware of my moronicism," Stiles disagrees. His words are slurring together. "I'm kinda privy to it. Y'know?"

"Uh huh."

"You did'n answer my question."

"Go back to sleep," says Derek. Stiles _aww_ s. " _Now_." Throughout this ridiculous interchange, the rage has inexplicably subsided, to the point where when he finally succumbs and hangs up on Stiles, he has to remind himself what he was doing and why he was so angry about it. Cat vomit. That's it. He tears himself another piece of paper towel.

::

Stiles and Derek never got around to buying furniture and things to fill up that corner bedroom, but piece by piece, things start appearing in there anyway. First, Erica replaces her dinner table, and the old, small, square one appears shoved in the corner opposite the crib. Then Mrs. McCall donates an old rocking chair, runs a hand over the carved wood with a small, wistful smile. "I used to rock Scott to sleep in this after I fed him," she says. "It was his favorite place to barf on me, after church and the bank."

Kira brings them books. Scott delivers a freshly painted bookshelf.

Jackson was facetiously sent four birth announcements (talk to Scott and Stiles; Derek had nothing to do with it), to which he claimed he's using all of his furniture, and "doesn't approve of bailouts," but then one day Derek gets back from the grocery store and there's an expensive-looking high chair in the kitchen. "I've been informed by a reliably violent source that I saw nothing," Stiles says serenely from the kitchen counter.

Boyd's girlfriend Monica shows up of her own volition with an area rug. Says, "Hey, Derek." Props it up against him like he's a wall. Leaves without another word.

::

The new rug is inspiration to finally paint the nursery, Stiles standing in the doorway and watching judgmentally. "You're getting some on the crown molding—you know what, just let me help. Gimme that. _Gimme_ that—"

" _No_ ," Derek and Scott both snap in unison, and then squint at each other in shock. Stiles lunges once more for a paint roller, which Derek easily removes from his reach.

Stiles' friend Danny, who is in town for his mother's birthday, rests one bracing hand on Stiles' shoulder. He says calmly, "Just let us, Stiles. Give us the illusion that we have some _semblance_ of control, here."

"Control," Stiles parrots, worming out from under Danny's grip. " _You_ want control? No one lets me have control! No—" He's breathing heavily now, pinked and starting to sweat. "Huh... Fine. _Fine_." He returns to the rocking chair and eases himself sullenly into it. " _You win_ ," he hollers at no one in particular.

"He's right, though," contributes Lydia from the other side of the bedroom. She's wearing a light denim shirt, cinched at her waist, and some black leggings: it's the first time Derek's ever seen her wear pants. Her hair's all tied up in a handkerchief sort of thing. Scott turns and addresses her wordlessly. She does something with her eyebrow, head shaking slightly. "Do you want me to _lie_ to you? The painter's tape is crooked."

Rocking himself slowly, Stiles shoots an appreciative and smug beam at her, and then at Scott. Derek largely misses the beam because he's across the room.

"Maybe we should just call professionals."

" _What_? Why—no," Stiles starts trying to get up again, and Danny and Scott both exasperatedly start shouting at him to sit back down. "No, why would we _pay_ for something that—"

"—for real, Stiles, you shouldn't be—"

"—came in here after we were done, you wouldn't even _notice_ —"

"No, you know what?" Stiles has finally made it onto his feet and is standing pointlessly, wincing and bracing his hands on his lower back. "This conversation is over. Give me a paint, um, the thing, give it to me."

"Keepaway from Stiles," Scott announces.

"Dude, I don't have the energy for this," says Stiles miserably. "Just _give_ me the foam thing with the paint, and, like, go do something productive for a while—"

"Stiles," says Lydia placatingly. "Let's go downstairs."

"Down _stairs_?" Stiles repeats incredulously. 

"I'll show you how to use the Keurig."

"If you think it's somehow _escaped my notice_ that you're patronizing me," Stiles announces loudly even as Lydia's herding him out the door, "I've got some _disgruntling news for you_! I didn't even _want_ the stupid Keurig, and here _I_ am trying to make sure this house doesn't end up in _painted shambles_..." His voice fades as he clomps down the stairs. 

Scott, Derek, and Danny paint in exhausted silence for a few minutes. Then, Scott says, "You know what? Painted Shambles is the name of my new band." Danny starts laughing. "For real," Scott goes on, smiling, heartened, "I think it's gonna be, like, 90's grunge, metal fusion..."

::

Stiles' close friends and family are all setting everything up. Derek's not sure it feels like a _pack_ , necessarily—at least not in the supernaturally specific sense. But practically speaking, a pack has come together to back Stiles up, no matter how obnoxious he gets: this big, patchwork family has been taped together, ready for a kid, ready to catch him like he'll fall out of the sky from the stork. If that _was_ how it worked, Stiles would be out front now, head tilted back, waiting.

As it is, he flips through catalogs, watches some TV, does a lot of eating. He gets jittery playing video games for too long, now—the anxiety is palpable around him on a daily basis, because there's a baby coming, and because he had to cut back on his meds. Derek tries not to hover; Stiles _detests_ the hovering. He gets enough of it from Scott and his dad.

Scott seems to think Derek doesn't hover enough.

Derek cares more about what Stiles needs than what Scott thinks Stiles needs.

What Stiles needs is pack and agency, and he has these in droves. Support and time, food, money, a den completely prepared to accept his kid and nurture him, like an extension of his nebulous womb. Stiles has all the support he needs, and what doesn't fit—what is _surplus_ —is Derek.

Derek is the lowest common denominator of literally every horrible thing that's happened in Beacon Hills since the first week of 1993. If they came, it was for him. If they attacked, it was because he let them. If it weren't for the Hale women, if it weren't for Scott, Beacon Hills would be a bastion of danger and economic downturn. Derek's been little more than a blight on this city his whole life. He's _known_ for it. He hadn't stayed in Beacon Hills for longer than six months straight since his parents were killed because any length of time he spends in one place means a ticking clock. He can hear the death beetle. For all the shit he's given Stiles for being up at all hours lumbering around complaining, Derek wakes up almost every night smelling smoke or hearing urgent whispers, and checks every corner of this house with horrid memories, cruel laughter and husky rambling, ringing in his ears. 

When he returns miserably to bed, he can listen to Stiles carry on sporadic, blurry-edged, nonsensical conversations with some oneiric, psychological version of Derek. Stiles _adores_ dream Derek, exudes bliss even has he has infuriating arguments in his sleep, and that affection that continues even without Stiles' input used to be soothing, but tonight Derek decides it's the most terrifying concept he's ever had to face.

He's been distant: Derek knows he's been distant. He also knows Stiles doesn't appreciate it, but what can Derek do about it? He's getting distant with _himself_ , for christ's sake.

He feels guilty about everything he thinks, everything he feels, everything he sees. Stiles has this _baby_ coming: not only would he be free of this obligation if it weren't for Derek, he also wouldn't have an _axe_ over his head without Derek. Because Derek in himself is an axe over everyone's head. Who has he ever loved or wanted that hasn't been killed? Statistically, Stiles is up next. With a _baby_ on the line. Leave it to Derek to pull off a fuckup of this magnitude when it shouldn't even be _scientifically possible_.

Derek dreams one night the baby is here. He's holding it, tight against his chest, and the entire forest is burning down around them. He's running, trying to find someplace to get to that's not ablaze, someplace he can leave the kid that will be safe, and there's nowhere. Everywhere he turns there is _fire_. Finally he stumbles upon some glade towards the east end of his family's property where he can hide out with the child, and, heart pounding, he peers down at the baby, only to find that the baby's actually a bird, and he has accidentally crushed the bird in his escape. He convulses awake with a swear and an anguished wheeze. Stiles is in the bed beside him, sleeping quietly, and Derek does his best to stumble out of bed and downstairs without waking him. Derek's luck, or lack thereof, should be framed and mounted in a museum somewhere: Stiles trails in after him a few minutes later. "What're you doing," he wonders, drowsy and bewildered. 

"Nothing," says Derek tightly, back to him. He can still feel the bird in his hands. "Go back to sleep."

"Right, I can _totally_ sleep now, you seem _great_ —thanks for your reassurance." 

"Go _back_ ," Derek repeats, "to _sleep_."

Stiles ignores him. "What's going on with you, dude?" Derek looks down at his hands. The blanket he held the baby in was a strangely familiar, woven afghan. He can't figure out where he's seen that blanket before. He can't remember where the glade was. "Come on," prompts Stiles. Ordinarily he's maddeningly successful at needling confessions out of Derek, but the sleep deprivation has him coming across as impatient and unhappy. "Babe, look at me."

Derek turns his head a little, gaining sight of Stiles in his periphery over his shoulder; but he otherwise doesn't move. 

Stiles says, calm and sharp, "Dude, you've been acting like a nut job for weeks."

"I'm a nut job."

"Yeah, you kinda are." Derek feels a panic coming on, creeping up his throat like bile. He stares wild-eyed out the window. " _Talk_ to me, damn it."

"Talk to you?" Derek parrots, feeling a hysteric sort of half-laugh bubble up his throat. "You want me to _talk_ to you?" He turns now and looks at Stiles. "Talk about _what_? What is there to _talk_ about?"

"Derek," Stiles says carefully.

"You wanna _talk_ about what a _monumental_ fuckup this was?"

Stiles says, hoarse and quiet, "What was."

"Don't play _dumb_ , Stiles," snaps Derek, teeth grit. The small step Stiles takes back breaks Derek a little, and that knife of inward rage keeps him talking. " _You_ never _wanted_ this. This wasn't what you _wanted_ ," he's getting louder, angrier, and Stiles' eyes are getting wider, "and no amount of you _bullshitting_ yourself will change that. What are we gonna _do_ ," Derek feels the change burning on the backs of his shoulders, "when it all _burns up in our faces_?"

Stiles stares at him in horror for a long moment. Then his mouth twists, and he tells Derek with his throat tight, "It is _ever so slightly_ too late for you to back out of this, Derek."

"You think I don't _know that_?" Derek demands of him. "You think I'm not _sick_ with that? I _did not plan this_ , Stiles. I _never wanted this_. I _cannot do_ this with you anymore."

Stiles flinches back like he's been slapped. He swallows, blinking, and Derek feels ripped in two. He heads for the door. "If you leave again," Stiles tells Derek's back, "I am _not_ picking you up this time." Derek unlocks and opens the door. "You hear me? You _stay gone_."

"Fine," Derek bites back, and slams the door after himself. 

 

 


	10. ache, part ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where can I get therapy, how to let your father-in-law support you, anxiety, and more.

Derek is unlucky, dangerous, and unfathomably, hilariously, _historically_ stupid. Derek realizes, as he gives in to his basest instincts and shifts in the preserve: he likes to think it's his luck, he's got cosmically terrible luck, but—the _inescapable reality_ is that Derek is _refuse_. He _ruins_ things. He's handed decisions to make, and he _always, without fail_ , makes the _wrong_ one. Derek killed his entire family, he got them burned alive before he was old enough to have a drivers license; he handed three teenagers a death sentence; the number of people he's _fucked_ that turned out to be _serial killers_ is _not zero_ ; he has now managed to land a human male with an _unwanted pregnancy_ ; and now, he has stormed out of the house in the middle of goddamn winter without his shoes on. Derek is negligent, and selfish, and _fucking stupid_.

As his truer self, Derek can feel his connection to Stiles: he's worried to the point of nausea. _Damn_ it. On the plus side, he's also _livid_. Derek's about two miles from the house, and still he can tell: Stiles is so angry Derek can taste it, acrid on his tongue like lukewarm, black coffee. Derek slumps his shoulders, feeling the shift melt pointlessly off his body, and looks helplessly towards home. Then it sinks in what he's just done. He remembers what he said. He remembers what he dreamed and he realizes what he has just done to Stiles, and it all crashes down on him like a ton of bricks, like an anvil to the solar plexus. He sinks to the ground, hunches over, like if he gets as small as he can, he can shrink into nothing. 

Eventually he runs out of the energy it's taking to stay away, and he starts trudging toward home.

It's always an actual, physical pain when his wolf side and his human side are so at odds, and it's only been like this maybe once in his life. He can't remember the circumstances; he must have been only four or five when it happened. He needs to be away. He needs to be home. It's like Derek imagines a migraine must be like. A migraine in his chest. He wants his mother. He wants Stiles, wants him so bad his ears ring with it. He sits on the porch steps like an intruder, drops his head into his hands.

He's out there, feeling like he's made of stone, for all of ten minutes before Stiles finds him and bangs the storm door open, spitting mad. "You _asshole_ ," he says. It's not a snap, or even particularly loud. There's just a sick, vicious growl to it that has Derek breathing out a silent lungful of agreement. "You have been gone for _three hours_ , you _fucking goddamn lunatic_." Derek does not respond; although it's nice to have a gauge on what time it is. "Derek," Stiles finally snaps. It's loud. " _Where_ the hell have you been? For _three_ —I have been _losing my mind_ , because _you_ can't be fucked to— _answer me_ , you _shit_ —"

"What do you _want_ from me," Derek mumbles into his palms.

Stiles sucks in a quick breath, and then punches Derek in the arm so hard it knocks him against the fence post. "You're _leaving me_?" Stiles demands shrilly. "You—you _selfish bastard_ , I ca—I can't—"

"Trying _not_ to be selfish," Derek mutters on an exhale. 

" _What_?"

"I am _trying not_ to be selfish," Derek enunciates. "It's a—"

"No," Stiles is interrupting, "don't pull this martyr crap on me again, Derek, you told me _two years_ ago you weren't gonna—and now you're gonna bring it back when I need you the _most_ —" 

"They all died."

"—having a fucking heart attack, you just _walked out_ an' you," Stiles drags in a breath. Then, again, " _What_?"

"There were _children_ inside," Derek tells Stiles. He finally looks up at him, and Stiles is wide-eyed, mouth open like he's been punched. " _That_ is what's on the _line_ here, they were _in this house_ —"

"Derek," Stiles says, wilting exasperatedly.

"They _burned_ to death—" Stiles drops onto the step beside him, yanks him close, and Derek clings to him, shaking. "God, I didn't mean I was—I don't wa—" Stiles shushes him, sighing, and Derek can't tell if it's supposed to be soothing or if Stiles is just trying to think; all the same, Derek quiets. He doesn't cry, really, but he does shatter and collapse inward like a dying star. Stiles is an instinctive hugger, does it before he's thinking about why, and Derek's never been quite so grateful for it until this second.

"Dude," Stiles says eventually. By now the sky is lightening and there's a bird that's woken up, and Derek recalls the bird in his dream. "Listen," Stiles says, recapturing his attention. "Are you listening?" Derek nods. "It was not your fault." Derek sighs. " _Well_? I dunno what else to tell you. You think I've been telling you that this whole time because I like hearing myself talk or something?"

"You _do_ like hearing yourself talk," Derek replies hoarsely.

Stiles pauses. Then, drily, he says, "Be that as it _may_." Derek takes a deep breath, feeling suddenly like he hasn't breathed in months. Stiles misinterprets this as another impatient sigh and insists, "No, dude, look. It happened because _werewolves_. All right? It happened because _Argents_ , and because—because your mom had a lot of _enemies_. It did not happen because you're _you_. It did not happen because _Derek Hale_. And I know," Stiles goes on, one hand up like he's a really lazy crossing guard, "you have a lot of anecdotal evidence to the contrary, _believe_ me, I get it. But I can't, I don't have the—you should _talk_ to someone about this. Someone who isn't better suited for, for solving crimes and gestating fetuses and, like, eating chocolate shell topping with a butter knife."

"Right," Derek mutters, dismissing the chocolate shell sauce comment, because it's not even the weirdest thing Stiles has eaten with a butter knife—and also because that comment wasn't a reference to the pregnancy at all. He's always eaten weird shit with a butter knife. "There's such a great abundance of _werewolf trauma counselors_ in NorCal."

Stiles shrugs under Derek's head. "There's Morrell. She's pretty much exactly that." Not really. Does Stiles really think that? Derek sighs, and Stiles runs his fingers through Derek's hair, which is limp from the morning fog. "You gotta fix this, baby," he urges softly. Derek rubs his own face with his hands in reaction to the pet name. Pet names are for people who are good to you. Pet names shouldn't be for Derek. You don't call someone who hurts you and ruins everything _baby_. "You can't keep just, just letting it eat away at you like this. You can't keep letting it build up on you and then, and then just— _freaking out on me_ when I ask you what's going on. What's—what's gonna happen when we've got a little _kid_ around? Are you hearing me? You—you damn near broke my heart." Stiles' voice breaks finally, just a little. 

Oh. Oh, jesus. The guilt and shame are actually crushing Derek. He shakes his head, looks at Stiles, trying to find the words to—

"I'm not looking for another apology," Stiles points out quickly when Derek starts to draw in breath to speak. "I just want you to _be all right_. Because I need you around. I mean it, I'm—I'm dead fucking serious, Derek. I _need you around_. Something about, when you're gone, he kicks me in the lung, and you, maybe—" Stiles swallows, gaining more control over his emotions. "Maybe there are other people who can do this alone. _Tons_ of people are strong enough to do this alone, but _I'm not_ , and I _don't wanna be_ , because, because I _like_ being soft and whiny and married to you." Derek sits up, but Stiles keeps his hands where they are, one in Derek's hair, one fisted loosely in his shirt. "Okay? It's my thing now."

"It's your _thing_?"

"Yeah," says Stiles. He's got dark circles under his eyes. "It's my _buddy cop schtick_. Scott's the independent, emotionally healthy one, and I'm the weepy one with the emo husband."

"You weren't even old enough to _notice_ the emo trend," comments Derek. 

"The internet has it well documented," Stiles tells him, "and I need you to _find a way_ to fix this. Okay?"

Derek nods gravely. "Okay."

"You would want me to do the same, yeah?" Derek nods again. "It's like L'Oreal Kids," says Stiles, grinning at him. "Because you're worth it, too." Derek rolls his eyes. "Shut up, the lesson applies. Help me up, my toes are freezing."

"Stiles?" Stiles pauses, and Derek takes loose hold of his fingertips. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it."

Stiles finds a piece of lint or dirt or something in Derek's beard and plucks it out. Then, for some reason, he sort of rubs Derek's face there with the pad of his thumb. "I know," he says softly. After a long minute, he adds, "Make it up to me."

"How."

"Make me some eggs."

What? "Eggs?"

"You know, the little oblong white things? Scramble 'em. With cheese."

::

The sheriff arrives unannounced one day, around eleven in the morning. Derek's carrying a laundry basket when he answers the door. Flushes, drops it, shoves it to the side with his bare foot. The sheriff nods appreciatively and steps inside. "Stiles is at work," Derek says, and promptly feels guilty for letting him go. Even though he looked somewhat well-rested this morning—at least, as far as Derek could tell. He's not the most observant in the mornings.

"That so?" the sheriff asks. "Kid told me he'd quit."

"Today's his last day."

"Oh. Well, I—" He debates with himself for a moment, and then folds his arms. Derek's seen him many times in casual clothes instead of his uniform, but the sight of him in a hoodie and rumpled khakis is still vaguely disconcerting. "I wanted to talk to you about, ah—the, um, the child's college funds. I had some money saved up, for Stiles, but with the scholarships, he's got a little left over, and—"

"It's fine, sir," Derek says, and then flinches because _damn_ it, Derek. Mrs. Hale's biggest pet peeve was him interrupting, and he was doing it _all the time_ as a kid. _Still_ hasn't learned; what a fine, upstanding man Derek is. "I mean, with my family's—there was plenty of money, it's—" He clears his throat. Wishes he'd combed his hair this morning, maybe shaved for the first time in two weeks. "It's taken care of."

"Well, that's good to hear," says the sheriff, approvingly. Derek relaxes marginally. "I wish you'd let me help a little bit, at the very least."

Wryly, Derek says, "I'll send him to you when he wants his first car."

The sheriff laughs. "You do that," he says. Makes his way to the door, and then stops with his hand on the handle. "You know," he adds, laughing a little self-deprecatingly, "if my only son had to fall in love with a werewolf, I'm glad it was you."

Derek blushes, startled.

"You'll protect him," says Sheriff Stilinski, positive. "Stilinskis are good judges of character, and we know what we want." Derek hasn't the foggiest idea what he's talking about now. "You let me know if you need anything, not just money. Babysitting, engine trouble, advice about crying babies—just a _beer_ , you _call_ me. Savvy?"

Blinking, Derek nods. The sheriff leaves him alone with his thoughts and his dirty laundry.

::

Stiles is playing MarioKart with Scott. "Fuck _yes_!" he crows, and then Scott says mildly, "Blue shell."

"Fuck," Stiles says, tossing up a hand helplessly. Derek puts a water bottle in it. " _Fuck_!"

::

Derek pretends not to watch Stiles chew on his lip, hop back to his feet, and disappear into the newly painted bedroom.

Which he's been doing for—Derek isn't really sure how long. He didn't used to, but now he does. Rearranges the stupid room, puts more blankets, takes out blankets that he says "suck." (The blue blanket never "sucks.")

Derek doesn't say, _Stiles, it's fine,_ doesn't say, _relax_ , because he knows it would be directionless and condescending placating. He just watches. Sometimes he helps, which Stiles does not address, but he seems to appreciate. Derek irritably watches Stiles silently decide between a stuffed parrot and a stuffed rabbit for almost an hour. Then he snatches both out of Stiles' hands, hurls the parrot into the crib, and crams the rabbit sideways onto a bookshelf. "Dick," Stiles says disparagingly. See? Derek's helping. He's helpful.

Once or twice they eat lunch in there, in that little room, and it's peaceful. It's a wonderful little room, perfect for a kid to grow up in. It's right on the corner of the house, with a tiny bay window wrapping around a foot-tall built-in bookcase (lovingly filled with books that Stiles repeatedly reorders) with a cushion on top. The walls are painted powder blue. The crib is a dark, rich brown, the table is white. The mobile was hand-built by Danny, has wolves hanging from it. A fox, a coyote, and a pear. 

Framed on the wall above the crib are little watercolor illustrations by Scott's mother. People and wolves, flowers and mythology. 

The room's been put together by the entire pack, by their friends and family, glued together by love. Derek can't see anyone growing up here unhappy or wanting for anything, frankly. As long as he's vigilant enough to prevent what happened to _him_.

This room was his when he was a kid. Actually, technically, _this_ room wasn't; the room that was is gone, as is the entire house. It was razed to the ground and then rebuilt to Derek's specifications. He was initially intending to sell it, and his house had a nice layout, good for a family with five kids. He had the massive, purposeful basement replaced completely with a normal one: unfinished, with laundry hookups. He added a few things, like a rearrangement of the kitchen, and hardwood floors. Bigger windows that didn't stick, french doors in the kitchen, the "parlor" replaced with extra garage space. That window seat didn't exist in 1996, either. So this isn't really the house Derek grew up in at all.

But he couldn't resist the impulses to keep certain things. The front window is, if Derek and Cora's memories are accurate, almost an exact replica; the rickety sun porch was maintained because it was built by the hands of Derek's grandfather probably in 1997; and always fresh in derek's memory like a wound, he changed almost nothing about this room. Derek has a very soothing memory of another world, one where the room had a wallpaper border around the tops of the walls, with roads and cars on it. He had a dark blue bedspread, rumpled and pilled across a bed with drawers underneath it. The room smelled like fresh pine and lavender fabric softener, and he stood at the window with a wooden helicopter under his arm, and put his little palm flat on the cool glass pane. Outside, his sisters ran around in the sun, threw a football at each other as hard as they could. That world was small and safe and so, so quiet. Sometimes, Derek wonders if it happened at all.

The door to this room was guiltily locked until Stiles moved in.

::

Once again, in the dead of night, Derek wakes up. Hears Stiles' heartbeat thrumming, knows he's awake, too. He rolls over to face him. Trails his fingers along Stiles' forearm. "D'you think we're ready?" Stiles asks, voice low.

Derek has no fucking idea. "Yeah," he says flippantly, and Stiles snorts.

"I don't need to be a werewolf to know when you're lying, dude."

Derek wraps an arm around Stiles. Kisses his cheek. He gets _vile_ when he's sleepy. " _You'll_ be fine," Derek amends.

Stiles stretches to nuzzle against Derek's jaw like a cat. "I think we'll _both_ be fine," he says.

"Don't as—"

"I'm _not_ gonna ask what could possibly go wrong."

"Good."

"You know me, Der." He rolls over, scoots backwards until his back is against Derek's chest. Yawns deeply. "You know me."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ended predictably.


	11. navigation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What should I name my kid, ownership jewelry, that's not how C-sections work, and more.

Derek has no pillows left. There were four pillows on the bed and Stiles has all of them. They go under various crooks and dips in his body because every sleeping position is a wildly uncomfortable position now that he's shaped differently.

There's one under the small of his back, one scrunched up under his neck, one between his knees, and one under his head. Derek has no pillows.

So he sleeps on Stiles.

::

Derek sits up in bed rubbing his eyes. "Allen," says Stiles, earnest. "With an E, not an A."

"Ellen?"

"No. Allen. With an E after the Ls." Stiles is emphasizing certain words by gesturing with his right hand, a motion that Derek can only label a chopping motion. "As opposed to Allan with an A after the Ls. But I don't want that. I want an E after the Ls. _Allen_."

Wait a goddamn second. "As in _Barry_ Allen?" drawls Derek.

There is a pause. Stiles growls, "You know my name, not my story," and violently crosses something out in his notebook. "What about just _Derek_. It's—"

"You suggest that every week, and every week the answer is no," Derek says.

"Okay, but—"

"Isn't the definition of stupidity the ac—"

"S'the definition of _insanity_ , smartass, and _forgive_ me for trying to include you in a _legacy_ here."

"A _legacy_?" Stiles nods matter-of-factly, eyebrows raised in a disaffected, confrontational expectance. "No, since when is _Derek_ legacical in any—" Stiles is scratching an itch on his nose, an action he seems to find more interesting than anything Derek has to say. "Fine. You know what? Start a legacy. Name the kid Mieczysław."

"It's _not_ —" Stiles begins, goat successfully gotten. "No. Fine. God, you're such a _baby_." Derek didn't know somebody could lick their finger aggressively, but Stiles does it; and then he flips a few pages in his notebook. Bizarrely, he rotates the thing ninety degrees clockwise. Derek's not allowed to look inside the notebook, so he didn't know how Stiles keeps the names organized; but he's not surprised there are names written sideways. Stiles says, "There's always your dad's name."

"Roger?" Derek lays an unimpressed look on Stiles. " _Roger_."

"We've just lampooned _my_ name. This argument is ineffective," says Stiles, one eyebrow up. "Know your audience, Derek."

"Any lampooning came from _you_ ," says Derek, miserable and exhausted. "I don't get where this obsession with _legacies_ comes from."

"I heard some lampooning," Stiles insists. "There was a _distinctly mocking tone_ when you said my name, and _I_ —"

"You are _distinctly_ pushing me to a psychotic break," Derek informs him. Stiles makes a sort of _well, get on with it_ gesture. "Jesus. What's wrong with _your dad's_ name, then?" No doubt there will be some nonsensical reason that name doesn't count.

"It's, like, _super biblical_ ," Stiles obliges. "I don't wanna be _that guy_ , but that's a no-go for me." He pauses. "Unless you named it after Jonah, the whale guy. He got eaten by a whale? I don't remember why."

Come to think of it, Derek doesn't remember why either; he's sure there was a lesson. Stiles flips back several pages, selects his pen from the nightstand, and scrawls what Derek can only assume is _Jonah_. Or _Whale_. Derek groans, exhausted. Rubs his face with both hands. Touching the end of the pen to his lips, Stiles watches him do this calmly. Then he closes the notebook and reopens it right in the middle.

"M'kay," he muses. "How d'you feel about Chainsaw?"

Derek puts one of Stiles' pillows over his face and punches it four times.

::

"What in the _hell_ are you doing?" Derek asks irritably.

It's just after nine at night, and Stiles is sitting on the edge of the bathtub, eating chicken with one hand and watching a movie on his phone with the other. He doesn't pause whatever he's watching; he does, however, glance up at Derek while he chews.

Here is where, Derek thinks, someone more polite might take Stiles' bizarrely confrontational glower as the message it is and leave the bathroom. Derek is not that someone. He folds his arms and leans against the door jamb.

"What?" Stiles asks once he's swallowed. "I'm just gonna end up in here anyway."

"Really?"

"Uh, _yeah, really_."

Derek watches him take a resentful bite of chicken and feels unadulterated fondness swell up in his chest; he also feels that love translating into anger on his face. Finally he asks, "Why aren't you at least sitting on the toilet, then?"

"Right, like I need _help_ making hemorrhoids," answers Stiles with his mouth full. "Can I enjoy my bathroom time in peace, please?"

Derek flips the light off as he leaves, for no particular reason except to piss him off. There's nothing quite like deliberately inconveniencing your spouse to keep the magic alive.

::

"So when's the, uh." The sheriff gestures vaguely, indicating 'baby.'

Stiles watches him, nonplussed, for a moment. Then he says, "Stellar communication skills, Dad." The sheriff looks frustrated, but Stiles just moves on. "Doc Deaton's taking him out at the end of the month. On a Sunday, so the clinic will be closed."

He looks totally nonchalant about sharing this information, but Derek rolls his eyes, because they talked with Deaton about it back when Stiles was only a few months or so along, and Stiles was subtly wigging out for _five days_ about surgery. "I'm going under the knife," he kept saying. "At a _vet's office_. What if I come out neutered? Or _spayed_? Derek," he grabbed Derek's hand; "What if I come out a _ferret_?"

But he's had a few months to get used to the idea, so now he and the sheriff are at the glass table in the kitchen, what Lydia calls their 'breakfast nook' and what Stiles calls 'the dick table' because of a nail polish dick Scott drew on it when he was high three years ago. (Derek thinks it looks like a hot dog with mouse ears.) Derek is washing dishes; the dishwasher broke and currently functions as a drying rack.

"Daunting," says the sheriff about Deaton performing a cesarean section, and Stiles nods soberly. "Picked a name yet?"

Derek snorts before he can stop himself. He glances over his shoulder at Stiles, who looks like he wishes he could place a curse on him. "I have a list," Stiles tells his father loftily.

"'List' is subjective," contributes Derek. "He has a notebook full of names. He wakes me up at night to tell them to me, _refuses_ to talk about it during the day..."

"I'm not _refusing_ , I just—you know, you're some piece of work."

Flatly, boredly, Derek says, "Uh huh."

Stiles clenches his jaw for a second. "Fine," he snaps. "Your _majesty_ King _Dick_ cheese. You wanna hear 'em? You wanna hear my list?"

"While the _sun_ is up, _yes_."

" _Fine_! I'll go get my list!" His chair scrapes on the tile, and he storms up the stairs; rather, he sort of lumbers up the stairs. Stiles isn't celebrated for his spryness these days. On his way up, he bellows, "Your _wish_ is my _goddamn_ command!"

The sheriff gets up, stands next to Derek. He watches him scrub a pot with dried-on sauce stuck to it. "Claudia used to wake me up about middle names," he offers mildly. "We were always going to name Stiles after my father— _her_ idea, not mine—but she was adamant that his middle name carry meaning." He chuckles. "Once _she_ stopped waking me up at three in the morning, _he_ went ahead and took over."

"He's carrying on her legacy," Derek says aridly. The sheriff laughs, sighs contentedly, and then selects one of Derek's kitchen utensils and starts washing it with a dish towel.

:

About fifteen minutes later, the dishes are done, the sheriff is on a second bottle of beer, and Derek is listening to him tell some story about a crazy drunk he had to detain for disorderly conduct. It's nice; maybe Derek and the sheriff are a little awkward around each other for myriad reasons, but he's a nice guy and he's amicable enough. He's just gotten to what he claims is "the best part" when he abruptly stops mid-sentence. "Wasn't Stiles getting his name list?" he wonders.

They find him on the bed with the cat, snoring while she painstakingly grooms his hair.

::

Sometimes Derek gets distracted by Stiles' eyelashes. By the faces he makes when he thinks he's being funny. Derek only gets to unceremoniously reject three names one night before they're making out, lazily groping each other. Stiles reaches up blindly to turn off the lamp, but Derek grabs his hand, threads their fingers together. "Don't," he says; "I want to see you." To which, of course, Stiles goes violently red.

"You _what_."

"I want to s—"

"I _know_ what you said. Are you _kidding_ me? Don't _say_ shit like that," he says, flustered, squirming and pushing at Derek. "Don't _look_ at me like that. God, this is embarrassing—" Derek starts to pull away from him, but Stiles fists a hand in Derek's t-shirt and hauls him back in for another kiss. Derek will not, and does not, stop looking at him, because sometimes—obviously, Derek wants to cover his face with his hands and suffocate that way, because Stiles is an asshole and his life's purpose is to drive Derek to complete insanity just by annoying the shit out of him—but he's—sometimes Derek never wants to take his eyes off Stiles, ever again. He's just—he's just—he's attractive. He's cute. He's—Derek wants to _fuck him_. Derek pushes at Stiles, maneuvers him onto his hands and knees, nips at his back just to make him make a noise. "Okay?" he asks. 

"Nnyes," grumbles Stiles irritably. He's still mad Derek made him confront his own physical appeal again. "Gimme that," he adds with determination, and starts roughly dragging pillows down to buffer himself into place. "Are, um, are you gonna—uh, nail me? Or..."

"Maybe," says Derek a little slyly. For a guy who loves surprises and loves impromptu sex even more, Stiles really seems to enjoy trying to predict what Derek wants to do with him. He also really enjoys getting fucked so hard he's fisting his hands in the fitted sheet and hauling it off the edge of the mattress, but he seems like he needs something more than that tonight. More direct, more intense, more _focused_.

Stiles is still irritated. "I mean, you'd fuckin' _better_ ," he's grousing as he hoardes all the pillows; "I didn't clean my whole system out and let you leave the lights on not to get n-nay— _uh_ —" Derek shoves him forward so all his weight is braced on his elbows against the pillows and keys him up until he's hiccuping and choking against the sheets. "Oh god," he keeps saying, high and hoarse, "oh god, _oh_ god, _oh_ _god_ , _oh god_ —"

The thing is, Derek can't really keep his hands off Stiles sometimes. There's something about how he's rounded all out and flushed sort of pink all the time that has Derek constantly itchy. He typically doesn't give in to urges to grab Stiles and go down on him, because at any given moment, Stiles is guaranteed to be physically exerting himself, even doing something as simple as taking the vacuum out of the otherwise pointless understair storage closet. Stiles winces sometimes, "Right in the bladder, _god_ , kid, _why_ do you have such good _aim_ "; or he drops everything in his hands, snatches up Derek's, and hauls it over. "Here," he'll say fiercely, "right _here_ ," and Derek will get his hand kicked by something small and yet unborn. There is also a 50% chance at any given moment that Stiles will be awake. It doesn't matter what time of day it is: it is always equally likely that Stiles will be awake as it is that he will be asleep. He has been told by everyone with the capacity to do so that he needs a regular sleep pattern, but with his medications pruned back he can't manage it. He's up at all hours to freak out about something or parse something out or go digging for cream cheese frosting, or just because there's a werewolf all up in his guts and it's not always comfortable. And then there he is two hours later, twisted into a corner somewhere, wrapped in a blanket and snoring. Even today he looked weary and strung out; Derek thinks a better man would tell him to get some rest and revisit sex plans when he no longer looks resurrected. But it's late, and Derek's resist-Stiles operations aren't functioning at full capacity. Derek's favorite part of Stiles is his thighs, and he gets in there every chance he can get just to bite him where he's usually hot and a little salty. He palms them now, spreads Stiles' legs more, and Stiles keens into the pillowcase.

Thankfully, it turns out Jenna's experience is the exact opposite of theirs, because no matter how exhausted and occasionally ill Stiles gets, he seems to want it just as often as Derek does. Maybe more. He gets all twisted up in himself, Derek observes, frantic even, insecure or a little pissed off or just hyperactive, and nothing relaxes him quite like an orgasm. Sloppy handjobs followed by a nap that leaves a crook in his neck, usually, because he hates confronting his own body anymore. He still seems to miss Derek teasing him until he's a gibbering mess and then making him come like a train crash.

Like now. Derek pushes inside once Stiles has melted into the bed linens, and the sound Stiles makes is less one of sexual pleasure and more like _relief_. It's the way you moan when you finally get calamine lotion on a spider bite. And across the room, Derek can glimpse this in the cheap, full-length mirror bolted to the back of the door. He likes that, because even positioned this way, Derek can watch him bite his lip and sigh. He waits until Stiles gets that blissful, fucked-stupid look on his face before he comes himself. 

"We should, we should call him Awesome Rim Job," Stiles sighs afterwards, and Derek flicks him in the ear. 

::

It's three in the morning—when is it _not_ , anymore?—and Stiles is standing in front of their mirror looking completely deranged. Derek is sitting up in the bed and staring, for lack of anything else to do. 

"It's never coming out," Stiles decides calmly. "It's never—it's literally never going to happen."

"What?" Derek asks blearily.

"Look at this. _Look_ at this."

"Stiles."

"It's not coming out," Stiles goes on as if Derek never spoke. Derek gets up and walks over to stand behind him. "How can this come out? That can't be right, that's not right, it's—when I die, I will have a middle-aged man trapped inside of me, it's not, it's not—"

 _That's_ just ridiculous. Derek says flatly, "Stiles."

Stiles ignores him once again: he looks distraught, cranes his neck. Pokes his head forward at his reflection. He can't see his feet, ordinarily, but he can right now, and he says, "My feet are purple." They're not. They're a little _swollen_ , obviously, and they probably hurt. But they're still mostly foot-colored. "What am I gonna do?" he asks weakly, voice wavering, scratching. "This is it. I'm gonna fall apart. I wasn't _built_ ," he's starting to shout a little, hysterical, "to _do_ this. I wasn't _designed_ this way."

"Stiles," says Derek again, hands outreached tentatively. Like you'd talk to someone holding a weapon. Stiles is starting to hyperventilate. He braces one hand on the mirror. "Honey..."

Wide-eyed, Stiles drags in a harsh breath. "This is it," he says again. "I'm _doomed_."

"You're _what_? No," Derek reaches for him, but Stiles slaps his hands away and trips into the bathroom. He slams the door and locks it before Derek can get in. Derek knocks, pointlessly. "Stiles..." Stiles starts the shower. " _Stiles_."

"I smell," Stiles announces from inside the bathroom. 

"No, you don't."

"I'm _greasy_."

Jesus christ. How did Derek end up here in his life? Somewhere Derek took a weird turn and this is where he is. "Stiles, open the door."

There's a long silence. Derek's just about to give up, figuring Stiles must already be in the shower, when the door quietly unlocks and eases open. Stiles peers suspiciously through the door crack, and Derek glares back. "I'm gonna shower," Stiles tells him. 

"It's three-thirty in the morning," answers Derek. 

An unidentified emotion washes over Stiles' face. He edits meekly, "I want to shower."

Derek lets out a very long sigh. "Twenty minutes," he says. "I'm gonna check on you if you're not done in twenty minutes." Stiles furrows his brow, but otherwise doesn't react. "So you don't fall asleep in the shower," clarifies Derek. Stiles nods, understanding. Derek finishes, "Come downstairs when you're done." 

Frowning, Stiles retreats again into the bathroom. But he doesn't lock the door.

Half an hour later, smelling like soap and mint, he addresses Derek. "It'll be fine," he says, one cheek stuffed with scrambled eggs. "I've decided." 

Derek's annoyed, but it's sinking into the milky film of relief that Stiles is allegedly emerging from his breakdown. Stiles is crammed sideways into his chair at the dick table, wrapped in a blanket. His hair is still wet, rumpled and pushed back. Derek pushes one foot out and knocks it against Stiles'.

"Are you playing footsy with me?"

"Kicking you." Derek stirs his hot chocolate.

"You're gonna be a good dad," says Stiles. Derek glances up to scowl darkly; but Stiles is dead serious. "For real," he says earnestly. "You've been so good."

"Sure," says Derek flatly. "My mental breakdowns have been inspiring and supportive."

"I told you I'm not holding a grudge about that."

"Maybe you should be."

"You've been freaking out because you want to make sure," Stiles swallows and looks down at his eggs. He continues, lower, "you want to make sure we're safe. And taken care of." The _we_ felt like a punch in the gut. "And when I need you," Stiles goes on, "you're there." The corner of his mouth jumps up: an embarrassed, genuine little smirk. "Making me eggs."

They don't often make use of goopy displays of affection. For one thing, for all it's intertwined with feelings of amusement and love, they're usually, on some level, annoyed with each other. For another, it just doesn't come _naturally_ to them. Sometime in the middle of the night two months into their relationship, Stiles confessed that that behavior had come to represent failed relationships, for him. Disingenuity. The fact that he said this, quiet, naked, twisted up with Derek under some blankets while candles flickered and a storm roared outside, probably says something; but Derek doesn't speak that language. All of this considered, Derek reaches across the table to mingle their fingertips together. 

"You're great," Stiles tells him. "You're great for me." 

"Think you need to get some sleep," says Derek hoarsely. 

Stiles smiles genuinely at him. The first rays of the sunrise are hitting him, making his eyes gold and his hair almost reddish. Then, leaning in his chair, he says, "You'll probably have to Edward him out of me, though." Derek accidentally inhales his hot chocolate. 

::

"Eugene," says Stiles, holding back laughter.

Derek stares groggily.

"No? Okay, Ralph _Waldo_."

"No."

"Dick."

"Was that an insult or a name suggestion?" 

"Scott Jr."

"I'm going back to sleep."

::

"Have you ever wondered when it happened?" asks Stiles suddenly, and Derek has no idea what he's talking about.

They're in the car, outside the In'n'Out. They went through the drive-through because Stiles is in his socks. Derek turns, looks at him, the fries he's shoveling into his mouth like they're gonna stop serving them tomorrow. "When… we ordered? It was about five minutes ago."

Stiles must be tired, because he smirks, nothing but fondness in his eyes. Then he clarifies, "When we _conceived_ ," and he says it so _frankly_. Sometimes Derek is doing laundry before lunchtime and he'll have to set down everything in his hands, stop feeding clothes to the washer, and sit on the bottom basement step. Stare emptily and deal with the absurdity of his life. He feels observed, just in general.

However, for all his self-conscious contemplation of their situation, he hasn't wondered about it, so he says, "No." Of course, now that Stiles has mentioned it, he's wondering about it..

"D'you think it was Jackson's birthday?" asks Stiles. He looks at Derek, grimacing. "God, I hope it wasn't Jackson's birthday. I can't accept our kid's life being owed to _Jackson's birthday_."

Derek snorts derisively. "We used to have sex pretty often."

"Yeah, but I'm trying to narrow it down to all the times you topped…"

"No, I mean—" Derek takes Stiles' soda, to audible protest. "I mean this would probably be happening whether or not you got drunk at Jackson's birthday party."

"It _is_ true that you can't keep your mitts off me," concedes Stiles lightly. Derek rolls his eyes and drops back into his seat and scowls out the window while he chews. Stiles says innocently, "I'm just operating on empirical evidence."

"You're operating on being empirically obnoxious," Derek grumbles, and Stiles performs such a sarcastic round of applause that Derek shoves him in his seat and he spills his fries.

Once he stops laughing, Stiles decides, low, "I bet it was the time at the beach," and Derek goes very still. And very red.

The time at the beach was so intimate the memories are like a porno that plays at its own discretion and without Derek's input. The time at the beach shows up in his dreams sometimes in the late morning, after Stiles has gone to work and Derek is lying in the warm spot he left in the bed. The time at the beach sneaks up on him, makes him relatively flustered and incoherent if he eats crab cakes or thinks about hotel room service or smells the lotion they used when they ran out of lube towards the end.

He hasn't thought about the time at the beach in a while, and when Stiles mentioned it just now, Derek had a sensory flashback. He clears his throat, the phantom touch of Stiles' fingers clutching desperately at him tingling away. Says gruffly, "S'a possibility."

"I'm just saying," Stiles goes on, also feigning nonchalance; "I wouldn't be surprised. It was around the, uh. The right time, and it was really. Um."

"I get it," Derek says, but Stiles has already made up his mind to drop an h-bomb on Derek's dignity.

"Was pretty passionate," Stiles finishes, and Derek drops his face into his hand. "Like, I mean." He laughs, not because something's funny, but because it's how he deals with emotions. He pauses in his quest to lazily pluck fries off of Derek's upholstery. "It was _amazing_ , okay. You were so—it was just—if I had to pinpoint a magical connection, it would have been then."

It's too hot in the car. It was too hot in the hotel room. They were supposed to sightsee. There was this antique shop Derek had committed to going to with somebody, and Scott wanted to teach Stiles to surf. Somebody else, probably Scott's friend Danny, had tickets to a thing; they were supposed to also purchase tickets, and then go to it with him.

Maybe one of those things happened. Maybe. Derek doesn't remember. All he remembers is four days and nights of slow, nigh-constant, impossibly soulful sex. All he remembers is not being able to breathe fresh air, and not caring. Flattening his palms on sweat-damp flesh. Stiles' thighs clamped around his waist, his voice hoarse and steamy, the masculine slope of his shoulders and his taste when Derek bit him on the ribs—

Someone made some comment on the drive back. "You guys sure you don't have rickets from never seeing the goddamn light of day?" Who was that?

Derek doesn't remember who made the comment, because he and Stiles just _looked_ at each other, and he knows exactly where Stiles is coming from with this "magical connection" business. It is un _fea_ sibly _hot_ in this _car_. Derek rolls his window down.

"Okay, fine, it was the time at the beach," he snaps. "Can you drop it, now, please?"

" _Jesus_ , get a _grip_ ," Stiles giggles. "I realize our epic love has a deep and poignant hold on you, but take a deep _breath_ , okay. Count to _ten_."

Derek turns his head to glare at him, and he's red in the face, too. He's sort of half-smiling, coy. He puts his middle finger into his mouth, presumably to suck salt off of it. "Hypocrite," Derek says unforgivably.

::

"Dude, no, put your hand right, right _here_. He—hey—won't freakin' stop kicking. Fuck—stop _laughing_! D'you think he's got a cha-harlie horse or some shi—goddamn—"

::

"What if it's a girl?"

"It's _not_ , Derek. He's not, I just _know_."

"But if it is?"

" _If_ it's a girl, I have a lot of—ummm—" He fumbles the notebook. "I have a lot of, like, there's a couple I like that I think—and there's one in Polish I've had sort of—or we—we could call her… after your mom."

"I guess."

"And the male version of that would be… Tali…o?"

"Try again."

"… _Anakin_."

" _No_."

::

If there's one thing Derek finds irresistible about Stiles, it's his unwavering distaste for Chris Argent.

He's _never_ liked Chris Argent, and he has an everchanging and unending list of reasons for it, but he doesn't like talking about those reasons because it's a point of contention among the few who remained in touch after high school. He only likes insulting him, a hobby which has only become polarized over the years. He tries to keep it on the down-low around Allison, and does a terrible job of it.

"Dude, _why_ don't you like Mr. Argent," Scott asks today in the car after some petulant bitching about Argent's _phone etiquette_ , of all things. Stiles tosses his hands up, wide-eyed, like he's infuriated that he has to explain himself. "No, seriously. You haven't had to so much as _speak_ to him in, like, two years."

"He's just a _douche_ ," declares Stiles.

"A douche _how_."

"He's, look at his stupid _mouth_! He looks like an attractive monkey."

Derek's amusement catches him off guard, resulting in a thoroughly undignified snort. Scott scowls at him, and he clears his throat, pretends to check his blind spots so he doesn't have to explain himself. "Dude," Scott says, but Stiles plows on.

"There is literally nothing redeemable about that guy—his initials are awful, too, like—CAA. _Caa_ , like a bird of _prey_ —"

"Stiles, that doesn't even make any _sense_."

"He eats people's hamsters and koi fish, Scott."

" _Bro_."

"I've seen him do it. He's a monster. Tell him to move out of America."

Derek is laughing helplessly by now. Has to stay at a stop sign for a minute or two. They've had serious conversations about Chris Argent—in fact, Derek vented about Argent destroying his Camaro once and Stiles had to go do some target practice, he was so pissed.

"I'm actually kind of over this conversation," Scott grouses, folds his arms and scowls out the window when they finally start to drive again. "He's lost a lot in his life, dude, and he still helps us out when we need him, and I'd think _you_ of all people—"

"Sure, yeah," Stiles is interrupting, "he'll help you right off a bridge." Scott turns in his seat to look at Stiles properly, makes a face that demands explanation. Stiles hesitates. Then he says darkly, "Just take my word for it. Derek does."

"Bad example," Derek finally puts in. "Derek also hates Argent."

"Yeah? Well, Stiles thinks it's creepy when you talk in the third person. How 'bout _that_."

Derek glances in the rear view mirror and makes eye contact with Stiles, who elected to sit in the back seat so Scott could ride shotgun. Stiles makes a stupid face, so Derek jams on the breaks just to aggravate him.

It aggravates the wrong passenger. " _Ugh, look_ , you guys, I've had a headache all day and you guys aren't helping."

Contrite, Derek drives smoothly. The car is quiet for a minute or so. Then Stiles says agreeably, "Maybe you should call Chris Argent," and Derek starts laughing again.

::

One day Stiles is hunched sort of sideways in his favorite chair, a buttery leather recliner with cat-claw pokes all on the top of it. He's got his notebook, now rumpled and tattered, with post-it tabs of different colors sticking out all over on the sides and the tops. Derek looks over his shoulder and sees him penciling Derek's great great grandmother's name—Pearl—into a wrinkled page crammed so tightly full of names that Derek understands very suddenly why there are names written sideways. He has so many more names than Derek could ever have conceived. If every page is like this, there must be hundreds of names, _thousands_ of names. Derek sees names in other languages, names of planets and galaxies, names of species long extinct, names which would evoke powerful, latent magic from the core of the earth. But the oddest thing is that almost every single one has been violently crossed out. Derek feels a deep, aching clench in his chest, and looks at Stiles from where he's standing, the fan of his eyelashes as he blinks down at his notebook.

Derek realizes with a rush that Stiles has been sifting through identities and concepts to leave next to his child. He realizes how little a role he's been playing in this, and how much work and thought Stiles has put in. Derek returns pensively to the kitchen. He sits heavily down at the table. His newspaper crossword puzzle is still laying, long since completed, there next to him. He drags it and his pen over, and in the margin, begins his own list.

::

"Stiles," Derek says that night, as Stiles is blinking drowsily before a DVR recording of Hoarders: Buried Alive.

"Yeah," says Stiles absently.

Derek says again, "Stiles."

Finally Stiles looks at him.

"I was thinking," says Derek, and then pauses so Stiles can make a shitty comment about Derek thinking.

"You can _do_ that?" asks Stiles. There it is.

"I want to name the—the baby," Derek tells him, "after your mother."

"What? My mom?" Derek nods soberly. "Dude, no."

"Why not."

" _Because_ , because, what if—" Stiles drops his head back, emotionally exhausted. "Babe, what if it's a boy? What're we gonna call him, _Claude_? I know I said the thing about my name, but so help me if you make me name our kid _Claude_."

"Jesus christ, Stiles."

"It sounds like an _insult_ , okay? I'm filing that one under the same category as my dad's name. _Nix_."

"Shut up," says Derek. "Listen."

"I _heard_ you, and I'm—"

"Stiles, I want this." Stiles is looking at him, face all scrunched up. Derek suggests, "We can use her middle name if you want."

And Stiles goes quiet. Very quiet. "Oh," he replies, small. "Yeah, we—we could do that. Maybe." He frowns. On screen, a woman sorts through a six-foot pile of dolls, and Stiles watches this raptly. "Probably not. Probably still gonna go with Anakin."

"I'll sign the birth certificate while you're sleeping," Derek decides. "Claude it is."

"Don't walk away from me," Stiles hollers as Derek heads to the door to the basement. "Hey! You're taking advantage of my current state! I want a handicap! _Hey_!"

::

Stiles is busy. He is busy emotionally, fretting an average about twenty hours a day (the remaining four are the cumulative minutes he spends curled up under a blanket, watching golf and eating peanut butter out of a jar); he is busy mentally, planning his new life and the new life he's forming, thinking and trying to figure out how this, physically, is happening, in spite of the fact that he relies on Scott to bring him primary sources from their various bizarre dealers; and he is busy physically, in that it takes him several minutes to _plan_ how to stand up, let _alone_ committing the _actual act_ of standing up. He has stopped bending over entirely; and when he sits on the couch, Derek frequently makes himself useful as a living, standing, werewolf version of that as-seen-on-TV cane old people can attach to their car door. Stiles is pretty occupied in general.

However, this did not stop him from remembering Derek's birthday.

"I would like to sex you for your birthday," Stiles tells him apologetically, sitting on the couch wrapped in his cheap chenille afghan, "but just _remembering the process_ of taking my pants off makes me want to sleep for eight years." Derek is fine. Even if he wasn't exhausted by proxy simply from being in Stiles' physical space, he's more than capable of getting himself off. He reaches out and brushes Stiles' hair back where it's fallen onto his forehead. Stiles sighs, comforted. "And, uh," he goes on, "the stripper grams from downtown won't come out this far." Derek puts the heel of his palm on Stiles' forehead and shoves him enough that he has to fist a hand in Derek's shirt to keep from toppling over like a broken Weeble whose propensity for wobbling but not falling down has been lost. Graciously, after watching him struggle for a second, Derek pulls him back upright. " _Why_ did I marry you," Stiles complains, tired out from the trial of almost falling back against the couch cushions.

"Because I impregnated you," says Derek.

"Touché, motherfucker," says Stiles. Technically, biologically, and retroactively accurate. Derek doesn't point this out because any and all of Stiles' friends' jokes about him being a mother have all been met with violence followed by the silent treatment. Derek wants to avoid the same fate. Then irritably, " _Anyway_ , in lieu of that, I enlisted Scotty's help, to get you something." He squirms once, and then looks confused. Then, disappointed and a little ashamed. "Um," he says miserably, "can you, um—in the cabinet, under the TV, a box—" Derek doesn't feel like antagonizing him anymore. In the last fifteen seconds it has stopped being fun. He reaches behind himself, selects a throw pillow, and plops it into Stiles' lap before he gets up and opens the cabinet indicated. There is, inside and wrapped in a Kohl's bag, a box. Small and rectangular. He brings it back to Stiles on the couch. Stiles is happy again, holding the pillow. He removes the box from the bag. It's black, the box is, black and covered in velvet or something. A jewelry box. He opens the hinged lid and peers inside. Then, satisfied, he closes it and hands it back to Derek.

"Nice, a box," says Derek.

"You are _literally_ not funny," says Stiles; but his argument is poorly constructed in that he is grinning. " _Open_ it, you schmuck." Derek does.

It's a pair of rings. They are grey, some kind of mottled grey stone, sandwiching some kind of dark brown—but the other one has white in the center, instead of brown. On the underside, where they will touch the skin, is a dull silver color: they look, but do not smell, like unpolished silver. They're flat, as opposed to convex, and Derek's never seen something _tangible_ that's made his throat stop working before. He reaches out to touch one, and then stops, staring at them.

Stiles either misunderstands his pause or can't stand the anticipation. "That's not silver," he says quickly. "You know I wouldn't get you silver, right? I'm not _that_ thoughtless." Derek looks up at Stiles. Stiles is flushed, and Derek doesn't think it's from almost falling over a minute ago. He's fidgeting with the fabric tag on the pillow. "They're titanium," Stiles goes on. "Like the Sia song. It should last. You still have to..." He trails off, biting his lip. "Do you... like... them?" Derek opens his mouth to speak, but finds, inexplicably, that nothing comes out. He looks back down at the rings. They're still there. He finally touches one, the brown one. "I probably should have waited for, uh, like an anniversary or whatever," Stiles concedes quickly, as if Derek has any complaints. The silence is making him panic, but Derek is still more or less speechless. "But I was like, _I gotta make sure people know he's locked down_. I gotta..." Derek looks back up at Stiles. "Jesus, say something," Stiles says wretchedly.

Derek swallows, and clears his throat, and manages, "You got me a ring."

"Yeah," says Stiles. "I wanted, did—did you not— _want_ —one?"

"Stiles," says Derek consumed with an unfamiliar sensation of desperate and humiliating adoration.

"I-I thought," Stiles is saying, frowning. Derek has to shut down this ill-informed spiral. His arms feel numb, and the inside of his chest feels swollen, but he forces himself to break out of that, take Stiles' face in his hands, and kiss him like he doesn't think he has since the last time Stiles' life was in immediate danger. Like he needs him. Stiles sighs an emotional hum against his lips and just hangs on for the ride. It's not like he can lean in any further. "Ah, hm," he says pointlessly when Derek stops kissing him. Derek doesn't really move back very far, but he clutches at the box in his lap like he would to something he just almost dropped over a boardwalk. "Do... you... like them?" Stiles asks again, small.

Derek has to swallow again. "No one's ever given me jewelry before," he tells Stiles. "I don't know how to _be given_ jewelry." Stiles pushes the corners of his mouth down and nods, like, _understandable_. Casual, as if he wasn't just about to have a heartbreak-induced panic attack. "What... _are_ they?"

"They're rings," answers Stiles. "You wear it on your finger..."

"I will _cram_ this _box_ down your _throat_ ," Derek's interrupting slowly, staring with what feels like the exact expression of blank desperation he's had since he opened the box, which causes Stiles to dissolve into a fit of relieved laughter. 

"You're gonna think it's _so extra_ when I tell you," Stiles answers. He's stopped fidgeting with the pillow and started fidgeting with Derek's hand. Derek doesn't know when Stiles pulled his hand over, but there it is. "It is m—" Stiles laughs again, self consciously. "It is _meteorite_? And wood?" Derek goes back to staring at the rings. He squints to get a better look. "I'm serious," adds Stiles, a smirk in his voice. "I mean, if they were cheating me, I would probably never know. Scott and I thought it was sort of symbolic," he goes on. "You can't get _literal moon rock_ , so this was the next best thing. Mine is—" He squirms, so he can get closer and point at them. "Mine is moon _stone_ ," his finger brushes the white stone, "which is just, like, a silicate, but we were like, _let's go with the theme_..." He trails off because Derek's removed the brown one and is looking at it, supposing this one's supposed to be his.

"Wood?" says Derek.

"Petrified wood," clarifies Stiles. "It—babe, this ring is _literally_ older than dirt." Derek touches it with the pad of his thumb, amazed. "Like you. What're you, forty?" Twenty-eight. Same thing. "Did you know you can get freakin' _dinosaur bone_ jewelry?" Derek finally breaks out of his stasis to squint at Stiles. Stiles commiserates, "I know. I was like, that doesn't _sound_ legit, but neither did meteorite, so I was all, _okay_ —" He stops because Derek's finally slid the thing onto his finger, and—oh, but if he doesn't like wearing a wedding ring. He doesn't know why or even _how_ he's gone the last five months married but without a ring. Up until the second he opened this box, he had found the concept of a wedding ring archaic and pointless, an obvious ploy by the jewelry industry to wring even more money out of people. Like he needed an accessory to prove his commitment. Now that it's on his hand, though, Derek feels like something has slid into place that he didn't even know was out of alignment. "When I've researched our—predicament," Stiles tells him hoarsely, "almost every legend I find _stresses_ that werewolves are tied irrevocably to the moon. I read that they," he swallows, "that they sort of—straddle the line between the earthly and celestial realms. This one scroll from somewhere in Egypt that I got a PDF of said they've walked the earth longer than humans. This Nordic story said they came from trees. I thought, _shit_ , I'm lucky. That I get to live my life with this—this _empyrian creation_ , who—every time I think I've got you figured out, you do something new that blows my freaking mind. Like _knock me up_ ," Stiles finishes.

Yeah, if that's not the behavior of some _moon child changling_ , Derek doesn't know what is. He takes Stiles' wrist from where he's gone back to zipping and unzipping the pillow case on his throw pillow and drags it over. Facetiously, Stiles makes an L with each of his hands. Derek smacks Stiles' left until he relaxes it enough that Derek can put the ring on him. At first it looks weird, but, Derek thinks, turning Stiles' hand around, he thinks it sort of makes sense. Moonstones: named for the moon by humans with a reverence for, but minimal understanding of, it. "Yes," Derek says finally, looking at their beringed hands together. 

"Yes?" repeats Stiles softly.

Derek says, "I like it."

Stiles smiles at him, a little dewy. "I mean," he says, "you'd better, because I already paid for it." 

Stiles finally gets his "handicap," because although he is severely asking for it, Derek does not shove him onto the floor.

::

Stiles is up and ready to go four hours before they have to leave that Sunday. Derek finds him on the couch, frowning, tight-lipped. He's leaning his elbows on his knees, hands clasped and lifted in such a way as to facilitate gnawing on his thumbnail.

"You okay?" asks Derek.

"I think I'd like to fit into my shirts again," Stiles decides, like he's choosing which route to take on his way to jury duty. "Pants. Socks, my ankles won't be swollen. I won't have weird, mysterious bruising on my stomach the day after a full moon."

Derek watches Stiles placidly bounce his knees and fidget with his hands.

"And you'll stop force-feeding me water all the time."

"I'll probably still make you drink water," corrects Derek. Stiles actually looks surprised and upset about it. "You won't stop _requiring water to live_ ," Derek begins, but Stiles is drowning him out with a frustrated groan-whine thing.

"Great, thanks, _Dad_." Then he looks surprised at himself and falls quiet again. His heart starts pounding. He's doing that thing where he gets sad and scared, eyes impossibly huge and directed somewhere past this plane of existence: like he can see straight into his anxiety and it's too interesting to look away. Derek goes over and sinks onto the couch beside him. The jostling of the couch cushion jerks Stiles back to reality, and he grabs Derek's hand and squeezes, tethering himself there. "Scott's the godfather," Stiles announces. It was already decided, but he's been doing this: he goes through the list of decisions he's made, gets all his ducks in a row.

"Yeah," says Derek.

"Who else would it _be_? I mean, he's the reason we got the nursery done on time. And he picked out the wall color, and he's been my best friend since I moved to California, that's really important." He turns, looks at Derek. "That's _really important_ , Derek."

"I know."

Stiles nods once, and then faces back forward. "We're—" Stiles shifts to he can address Derek more directly. "We're going to be _parents_. You and me. With a—" He gestures vaguely, indicating 'baby.' "I'm, it's been almost a year, and I was _fine_ , I was fine until—and now I'm, I just—I don't know how I'm gonna _do_ this, I don't, I can't _believe_ I _thought_ I could _do_ this—"

Rolling his eyes, Derek hooks a hand behind Stiles' neck; he pulls Stiles close to lay his head on his shoulder. Stiles quiets almost immediately, and does some breathing.

"How are you not freaking out right now," Stiles asks finally.

"Both of us freaking out would help exactly no one," Derek replies. "We have to stagger our shifts."

Stiles giggles, and then turns his head, buries his face in Derek's jacket. He stays there for a bit, Derek's fingers buried in his hair, one thumb rubbing light circles behind his ear. And Derek likes this. He likes it a lot. Stiles is warm, a comforting weight on him. They've been living together for a few years, now, and he's still not immune to—to the smell of Stiles, just the scent he has, the sensation he leaves when he walks out of a room. Just the _fact_ of him, Derek loves. And Stiles _needs_ him right now. Derek finds he likes being needed implicitly, not in a 'literally only Derek can do this thing' sort of way, but in an 'anyone can do this thing, but Derek is most preferable' sort of way. He has a weak and unsure hope that he'll get more of that from a child. He stretches, presses a kiss against Stiles' temple, and with a sigh, Stiles casts out some tension. "Okay," Stiles says, muffled.

He sits up. Derek slides his hand down to cup Stiles' face, and Stiles arches catlike into the touch, eyes shut, fingers wrapped around Derek's wrist. Then he opens his eyes and nods.

"Okay," he says again firmly.

::

"I love you."

"I'll be here when you wake up."

"Derek."

"You'll be fine."

" _Derek_."

"I love you, too."

"Good. Okay. Jesus christ. How _hard_ is it. Here we go, I guess."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies if your name is Claude. 
> 
> But oh man, we're there. Baby achieved. Sort of. Like, we're at the baby threshold.


	12. growth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We made this, where can my husband get therapy, my kid controls my life, and more.

How can you become so completely obsessed with someone you've literally never met before? How can something so tiny be so fucking terrifying? How can someone so messed up and scarred help to produce something so unblemished and perfect?

Derek doesn't move, doesn't speak. He holds the baby, this direct result of Stiles not knowing what's good for him, this embodiment of everything that is worthy about Derek. Awed, he says to Dr. Deaton, "Thank you."

::

"Hey," Stiles says drowsily to Derek after. "Who, um, how did we get here."

"We live here," Derek answers without looking away from his new infant. 

"Fuck," whispers Stiles, peering miserably about the back room of the vet office. "Fuck!" 

::

"Oh my god, dude," Scott says, overwhelmed, when Stiles, finally more or less coherent, puts a smushed infant in his arms. He tentatively tightens the cradle of his arms around him, cuddling him close. "Did—what's his name!"

"Chris Jr.," Stiles says immediately. "Christopher Argent Hale. The _first_ , because my grandchildren, and their children, all of them, all named Chris Jr."

Scott gives him an impossibly furious scowl. Stiles snorts involuntarily, and then winces. "Bro," says Scott, aggravation melting slowly into concern and pity.

Stiles sinks back against the pillows with an exhausted grimace on his face; then he sighs slowly and says, "Sam."

"Huh?"

Stiles seems to have used up his energy lying to Scott a second ago. All he says is, "Sam," again.

"Sam," repeats Scott, thrilled. 

"Samuel—for my mom, but Sammy for short." Stiles swallows, reaches over and pushes a finger into the baby's miniscule fist. Samuel's face is small and purply, red and a little swollen. Newborns aren't known for their immediate beauty. All the same, Derek can see a glow about this one. This one is different. This one's his. Stiles must agree, because through the remnant pain, he half-smiles at the kid, warm and soppy.

"Gimme the full picture, dude," Scott tells him, adjusting his hold on Sam. "You got a middle name for me?"

Stiles smirks, now, a little sheepish and a little warning. "Uh, a few, actually," he admits, "but, y'know, my end of culture doesn't really cotton to much more than first-last-middle, so," and then he pauses to reach weakly for his water bottle. Derek retrieves it for him, and watches him drink from it, dribbling some down his chin. "So," Stiles picks up again, "I made his _official_ middle name the same middle name as this total loser I made his godfather."

"Marco?" Scott bursts out, going pink with pleasure. "Sam Marco." 

"And more."

"Yeah?" Scott glances at him, but quickly returns his gaze to the baby. "You should give me a run-through." Stiles nods, eyes falling shut. Scott tests out, "Samuel Marco Hale."

"Hyphen Stilinski," asserts Stiles.

Scott makes a face, and the baby makes one of those weird baby grunting noises. "Could be worse."

"Could be worse," agrees Stiles. Then he sleepily watches Scott lean in and kiss his kid. There's some serene smile on his lips, a satisfaction there. Derek feels something searing and perfect swell in his chest.

Having a baby, Derek thinks, is revolutionary in its most average, typical incarnation. Bare minimum, a person has created something from nothing, and for all the expanding and bruising and bleeding and shit, Derek sees nothing but beauty in the ability to create something from nothing. And here's Stiles, who biologically should not have been able to accomplish this, having just finished doing it. And he's right in this sweet spot in his pain meds, where he's not quite high and incoherent, and he's not asleep yet. Judging from the way he's happily observing Scott with their brand-new larva, he's getting there. "You good?" asks Derek, and then he drops a kiss to the top of Stiles' head. Like, might as well. 

"Pretty great," answers Stiles. "Cool cucumber. Made myself a baby."

"You're amazing," Derek confirms. "And loopy."

"Yep." Stiles hasn't stopped looking at the kid. "Stiles R. Stilinski achieves the impossible yet again. What will he do next? Sell and buy _money_! Experience _racism_ , breathe in _space_! Maybe I'll knock _you_ up."

"I wouldn't doubt it."

" _Look_ at 'im! He's a baby. I _did_ that."

"Stiles?"

"I'm not high, dude, back off."

"Sure you're not. How do you feel?" Stiles considers this for a moment. He relaxes there contentedly, and Derek takes his drowsy silence as an opportunity to hold him a little—while he's all floppy and agreeable. Presently, Stiles addresses Derek. "Remember the movie 'Alien'?"

::

Bringing an infant home— _his_ infant—is like nothing he's really experienced. Stiles hobbles in after him and immediately wants Samuel out of the gigantic carrier thing and in his arms again. Derek sets him up in bed before he gives the baby back to him. Then he stands in their quiet bedroom looking helplessly around. For all its contents, clutter, and trappings, the house seems vast and empty, daunting, with this brand new person inside of it. It's the first house Sammy's ever seen. The first bed, the first dresser. Stiles says pointlessly to him, "We live here."

The baby doesn't open his eyes. He tucks his chin slightly, turns his face into Stiles' flannel. "Oh," whispers Stiles, staring down at him and looking shellshocked, lost in the waves of time. "Oh, shit."

Derek watches it blindside Stiles all at once. He almost condescends to take Samuel from him, in case Stiles should have a freakout and drop his new kid. 

"I can't—do, do you—do you feel, um, suddenly, like you would do anything," Stiles gulps, "go anywhere, for this—this thing, this dude?"

"Yeah," says Derek.

Stiles goes on, a little quieter, and getting tearful: "Do you feel like your whole entire life just, just ended and then, like, restarted?"

Derek lays down beside him, and Stiles follows suit, still hypnotized by the baby. 

"I _love_ him," decides Stiles, in wonderment. "I can't believe how much I—I didn't know," Stiles finally looks at Derek. "I didn't know I could _hold_ this much love, and I figured, I thought it would all get _shared_ by you two, I never thought," Stiles breathes in, shuddery, "I never thought he could show up and just _make more_ of it." Those pain meds are kicking in. Derek reaches out, helps Stiles lower the kid to the bed in between them; then he tugs on Stiles' sleeve to roll him onto his side. There, Stiles blinks at Samuel, blinks more and longer until he's almost nodding off. Derek's in need of some rest himself; and the utter newness of Sam has him eager to lay by him and sleep: he can't wait to close his eyes and be doing the same thing as his son. "It's scary how much a guy can love these days," Stiles slurs at length.

::  

Sam's first full moon is exhausting. Stiles gets a picture ruined by impenetrable golden flashes, and Sammy cries until dawn.

Neither Stiles nor Derek get a single moment of sleep, because Sam's wailing is enough to give them both the jitters. "He'll probably be able to sleep through it by his first birthday," Derek assures Stiles over the sound of the baby howling so loud Stiles is actively wincing. And if Stiles thinks this is loud, he should give werewolf hearing a try.

But Stiles doesn't complain. He just looks vehemently distressed. Impotently holds out a bottle of formula, which Sam nearly claws a hole through.

Eventually, _blessed finally_ , he conks out in Stiles' arms, and Stiles relaxes into the couch very, very slowly. "Well," he says after a while, hoarse and quiet, blinking blearily and gently thumbing tears from Sammy's face. "Last night ranks about number six on my list of top ten most traumatizing experiences."

"First full moon is always the worst," Derek rasps back. Rolls his head over to look at Stiles beside him. "For bitten _and_ born."

"So it can only go up from here," confirms Stiles, and Derek nods.

"I think."

Stiles squints at him. Suddenly, Stiles' adderall reminder alarm goes off, and Sam jerks awake, screeching before his eyes are even open. Stiles drops his head back onto the top of the couch with a groan. Derek buries his face in his hands.

::

"Better now?" Stiles, haggard in his pajamas, asks the kid, buttoning up the pink dinosaur pajamas Boyd purchased. Samuel is red-cheeked, whimpering wetly; he never stops crying unless he's sleeping. "God, you're like a raisin," Stiles tells him, hefting him up onto his shoulder. "Like a huge, sad raisin." Sam responds with a louder wail, and Stiles coos sympathetically. "Hey, c'mon, sugar, it's okay. We can talk about something else."

"I'm pretty sure the topic of conversation isn't what's bothering him," Derek says drily, arms crossed, and Stiles mimics him childishly.

Then he cradles Sam in his arms to look at his ruddy, miserable face. "Who shot first, Han or Greedo?"  

Sam continues fussing for a moment until suddenly he sneezes, loud and hard, and then falls quiet. Stiles and Derek look at each other, surprised and amused. Hours of crying can now potentially be attributed to one huge, illusive sneeze. Stiles addresses Sammy again with a sigh.

"Wrong answer, bud," he says.

::

"It's always so fascinating," Deaton says, bent over the baby in Stiles' arms. "He's just a normal, healthy cub."

"That's what you said last week," says Stiles irritably. "Thought you'd seen born werewolves before."

"Not borne of a male mate," Deaton counters, to which Stiles grimaces like Deaton just double-dipped his chip. He takes Samuel's hand, presses his thumb into the tiny palm until Sam whines, distressed, and his claws come out. Derek's instinct is to step between them. It's an urge he's experienced before, but never quite this strongly.

Stiles reacts similarly. "Hey," he says tightly, cuddling Sammy closer. "You break it, you bought it."

::

Stiles is snoring, sprawled out on the living room floor, the baby in the crook of his arm. Sammy is in a polka-dotted sweater with a boat on the front, waving his hands and kicking his feet. He goes still when he sees Derek, and then begins flailing all the more violently. This, _this_ is for Allison's baby scrapbook. Derek silently retrieves Stiles' polaroid, snaps a picture. It's perfect. He tapes it into the scrapbook right next to one of a fatigued, red-eyed, elated Stiles holding a shriveled, reddened infant wrapped in the blue blanket that doesn't suck. Derek labels this new photo, _Stiles doesn't know how naptime works_. Stiles values memories too much to damage this page, which is a victory for Derek.

The next task is putting both of them to bed. Samuel's the easy part. He curls into Derek's touch and smells like milk. Stiles isn't quite so easy: it takes fifteen minutes of coaxing and threatening to get Stiles to move, only for him to roll over onto his side and then fall back asleep. In the end Derek just hoists him up and drags him into bed. Jesus christ, it's like living with two drunks.

Derek's just tossed Stiles into the bed and is pulling the covers up over him, jeans and all, when Stiles hazily mumbles, "I love you." Derek pauses, looks at him. Stiles nods knowingly. "For real," he rasps, and then he curls up into the pillows. 

He takes it back when he sees the picture.

::

One Saturday about a month before Stiles has to go back to work is rainy, grey overcast with intermittent thunder. Derek can deal with thunder. He has to, if he wants to be a normal person living in a normal society, but it doesn't change the fact that the first few thunderclaps are always jarring. Not quite painful, but almost like a tangible pressure on his eardrums. The sound of a thin cry from down the hall reminds him pretty quickly that not everyone knows how to deal with it.

He pads into the corner bedroom and hums sympathetically at Sam, whose eyes are glowing faintly gold, diffused by welling tears. He calms significantly once Derek bundles him against his chest. Tiny, flimsy claws snag in the worn cotton of Derek's shirt.

Stiles has sleepily rolled onto Derek's vacated side of the bed when Derek gets back, and he shoves him gracelessly. Grumbling, Stiles moves back. Thunder rolls, muted, across the sky, and Sammy cries outright, curling into Derek, which stops Stiles' grumbling as immediately as if someone flipped a switch.

"Sad again?" he asks the kid, once Derek's settled back under the blankets. He squirms his way half on top of Derek, next to Sammy's tiny head. "You're bad at this baby thing," he says.

Derek stiffens, but Stiles is talking to Sam.

"Your job is to be happy," Stiles goes on, voice flat and coarse with sleep. "You're really bad at that, crying all the time, it's like the opposite of being happy. I might have to cut your wages." More thunder, more crying. "That's it," Stiles says, pressing a hand onto Samuel's back, rubbing. "You're demoted. To fetus." Then he cringes. "Jesus, that was a terrible idea. Don't let me make decisions this early in the morning," he directs at Derek.

Derek snorts. "It's nine-thirty."

"So early. _Hmmm_ , too early."

The rain is steady and soothing, when the thunder isn't scaring his kid into beta form, so Derek lets himself sink into the pillows, under the blankets, with Stiles' sock feet nudging up his pant legs, hunting for warmth, and Sammy's spindly claws making miniscule pinpricks in his chest. He hasn't been this perfectly comfortable in a while, nor has Stiles been this relaxed, this _happy_. Derek melts into the sensation of sharing a _nest._ Nudges his nose into Stiles' bed-rumpled hair, breathes in sleep and muted shampoo.

"I like you," Stiles mumbles to the baby, one fingertip tracing the fold of infantile fat on his wrist. "You're sort of a bad baby, but you'll get used to it, you're plucky. You've g-got—" He yawns. "You've got a werewolf dad, he'll show you the ropes. He will." He stretches, then, pushing his face into Derek's throat—his frigid nose presses into Derek's flesh. Derek hisses.

" _God_ , Stiles."

" _Sorry_ ," Stiles says, stifled, "I'm trying to fix it, that's what you're _for_."

Derek shifts, letting Stiles bury his ice nose in the curve of his neck. Pulls the blankets up over all three of them. Presently he says, "You'll show him the ropes, too."

Stiles hesitates, and then sighs. "I'm glad I met you," he says. "I'm glad I have this. You're… good."

Derek goes very still. Sam fusses absently while he dozes back off, and Stiles squirms minutely, as he always does when he's comfortable, leaving Derek the one solid rock, the anchor to their ship.

::

Stiles returns to work on a Wednesday. He hovers in the entryway, fidgeting with the hem of the horribly baggy sweater he's wearing—because abruptly changing body type over the course of a three-week vacation is suspect—biting his lip. Looking at Derek, who has Sammy bundled in his arms. "You sure you're gonna be okay?"

"I guess we'll find out," says Derek.

"You're gonna be fine," Stiles decides, sounding almost hysterical.

"Probably," says Derek.

Samuel makes a weird noise against the bottle in his mouth. "You and me both, buddy," Stiles says to him. He looks up at Derek. "I'm gonna call. In a couple hours. And you need to text me pictures so I can be sure you didn't sell him to the circus."

"I'll just buy a different infant," Derek threatens. "They all look the same, you won't know."

"I'll fuckin' know," says Stiles.

"I guess we'll see."

"We won't. We're keeping him."

"I'm trading him in for a better one."

They look at him. His eyes roam aimlessly while he drinks. His impossibly tiny hands twitch and move; he thumps one against Derek's chest. There probably won't be a better one. They look back at each other. "See if you can get Kate Middleton's baby," Stiles says eagerly.

Derek grins. "Go to work, Stiles."

::

The next couple months are difficult because Sam still won't sleep through the night, and now Stiles has to be at work during the day.

Derek remembers his baby sisters, younger cousins, so none of this is a shock to him in the least. It's not even too much of a nasty wake-up call to have to get up in the night, really. Derek's been popping up twice a night out of sheer habit for years.

Stiles, however, is completely out of his depth. Derek tries to convince him to go back to sleep, but more often than not he gets up anyway, knowing Sam typically refuses to go to sleep without Stiles there to lull him with weary, desperate performances of "You Are My Sunshine" and "Duck Tales." As a result, Stiles is constantly exhausted, somewhat irrational. He's pale and drawn even when he's relaxed. Keeping any amount of brightness in his eyes is a sisyphean task. One Sunday Derek puts Sammy down for a nap, comes downstairs, and finds Stiles watching a fishing documentary.

"Fishing," he says incredulously.

Stiles blinks muzzily, and then looks like he's failed the TV. "I didn't even notice," he says flatly. He switches to Judge Judy. Derek observes a little surreptitiously from the kitchen, and concludes that he doesn't think Stiles is even really watching the show.

Sammy looks at Stiles like the definition of "heaven" begins and ends with Stiles' face, but Stiles looks in the mirror like he can see right through his own head, like he's not even present in the reflection. There's nothing there but dry toothpaste splatters and the towel rack.

::

They grab Scott and Allison, go to a baseball game down in San Francisco on a sunny day, and Derek is worried the travelling and crowds will freak Sammy out, but he seems to have inherited Stiles' social tendencies. They park on the street and walk to AT&T Park. Derek carries him (he loathes all other modes of transporting him, an opinion neither Derek nor Stiles can parse out), and watches him twist his head about, blinking, fascinated, at every person and thing he can see.

The sun is bright, too bright to look at, which makes Sam grunt with frustration.

Every couple minutes, Sam remembers Stiles is there, and reaches for his face.

Allison is wearing a green windbreaker with a reflective zipper, and Sam eyes it like he could find the meaning of life in it.

A woman near them in line at the park has a rainbow mowhawk, and Derek leans away from her so Sam doesn't try to touch it.

Stiles puts a hat on him, concerned he'll burn in the sun, but Sam throws it on the ground three times, and Stiles eventually gives up.

Derek plays Sam's favorite game, which is Hand A Thing To Sammy So He Can Hand It Back. Sometimes Sam loses this game, because he puts Derek's sunglasses in his mouth instead of handing them back.

The baseball game is not something Sam is interested in, and the throngs of people in the park are loud and jarring to him, because his control over his senses are shoddy at best. He spends the first several minutes staring intently at a very tall black man behind Scott, and then the next several crying inconsolably. "Noises are loud to small wolf ears," Stiles says knowingly to Sam, reaching into his backpack. He produces a pair of earmuffs in the shape of grey wolves.

"You think that'll work?" Scott asks him skeptically. When Derek was a kid, his dad generally told him to suck it up, learn to block it out, but he admittedly doesn't really remember being a baby. He wishes he could ask his parents what they did.

"Dunno," says Stiles, fitting them onto Sam's head. "If anything, he'll look awesome."

Sam momentarily stops crying. Blinks tearfully at Allison, half his hand in his mouth.

"I'm the best," Stiles announces, delighted.

"You're _some_ thing," says Derek, and presses on Sam's nose with the pad of his thumb.

::

Gladys from across the street from the sheriff's house adores Derek. It's something that took Derek a few months of dedicated muffin plates to accept without suspicion. She thinks he's funny and she hires him on springtime weekends to help her with her landscaping. In payment, Derek gets ice cold sun tea, banana bread, and cocktail shrimp. And gossip.

"We bought seven cases of cocktail shrimp for my niece Barbara's wedding," she tells Derek while he's moving rocks around one Saturday, "and then she and Dale postponed! Cold feet, probably," she adds as an aside confidentially. "Anyway, so now we have four months' worth of frozen cocktail shrimp. Eat. Eat!"

Derek'll eat anything that doesn't have nuts in it, so he eats a plate of cocktail shrimp for her.

"I have never heard of a wedding that wasn't postponed at least once for cold feet," Gladys announces. "It's men! _All men get cold feet_."

"I didn't get cold feet," he says with a shrug. "Neither did Stiles."

"Well, maybe you two are soulmates, what do _I_ know," she says flippantly. "Either that or you're lyin' to me."

"Yeah, I probably am," he agrees.

She loses her shit over that. "You should do stand-up," she tells him through the giggles.

::

When Derek drags himself into the house around four that afternoon, Sammy is _howling_. Derek can hear Stiles pleading with him from outside.

"Please," he's saying when Derek gets upstairs. " _Please_ stop, for five minutes, just stop, _please_." Sam hiccups, and then wails even louder. "I don't know what you _want_ , kid, I can't, I _ca—_ "

"Stiles," Derek says.

Stiles turns, stricken. He's got Sam bundled in his arms, flashing gold eyes and brandished claws and all. It looks like he scratched Stiles. "Uh, it's not," Stiles says, and then he shuts his mouth, eyes welling with tears.

Oh, god. "It's okay," Derek says quickly. Stiles shakes his head. "It's fine, here." He steps close, reaching for the baby. Stiles instinctively takes a step back, some half-baked, poorly-mixed argument forming uselessly on his lips. But it only lasts half a second: he lets Derek take Samuel from him. Stiles is buzzing and twitching with anxiety as he watches Derek put Sam, still bawling, into his crib. 

"What're you—" Stiles is looking at him through teary eyes like he's gone completely insane. 

Derek shushes him, short. Stiles looks frantically back at Sam, so Derek takes his hand. "C'mon," he says, leading Stiles from the room.

Voice cracking, Stiles protests, "But," as he nevertheless allows Derek to shepherd him into the hall. Derek shuts the door and then addresses Stiles.

"You're okay," he says, firmly. Stiles shakes his head, hiccuping. "Stiles—"

"He's _so upset_ ," Stiles bursts out. "He's still—he just _lost_ it, I didn't, and the longer he, the louder he _got_ , until he just—" He gulps messily. "He's not, it's not even the full _moon_ , I just couldn't—"

"Stiles..."

"You were gone for _two hours_ , I can't handle my _own kid_ for _two fucking hours_ —hah—"

"Stiles, _breathe_. It's _fine_."

"Don't patronize me," Stiles tells him, teeth grit. He's almost completely hysterical. "I left my fucking—my _fucking child_ in there because I can't, because it's _me_ , he cried and when I came in he cried _worse_ because it's _me_ —"

"Stiles, _stop_." Stiles finally does, messily like somebody slammed on his brakes. He breathes heavily through his nose, because he's biting his lips shut. "It's _fine_. You can take a minute, he'll still be there when you get back."

Stiles breathes in deep, and then tells Derek, wobbly, "I just don't know what he _wants_."

"He's a _baby_ ," says Derek. Stiles is distracted by a particularly shrill yell, and twitches like he's about to go back in there; Derek grips his biceps, gives him a gentle shake. "At this point," he says, "he's probably just upset because _you_ are," Derek tells him, and Stiles' face crumples. Derek pulls him into his arms. "He got you good, didn't he," he mumbles, thumbing the livid scratches on Stiles' jaw. They're about as nasty as a particularly rough cat scratch, already dry, but still an angry pink.

"H-he's still crying," Stiles says, voice low and wobbly, into Derek's shoulder.

"We'll go and get him in a minute," Derek promises. Stiles is still trying not to cry, and it's not working. Derek's witnessing a train crash. "Stiles, it's not you."

"I know," Stiles lies through his goddamn teeth.

Once Stiles has calmed down, he watches emptily while Derek soothes Sam, and by the time the house is quiet again, he's retreated into the bathroom, the door locked behind him.

::

Derek wakes abruptly in the night feeling passionate and totally irrational. He thinks vague thoughts about what he feels for Stiles, and how it seems neverending and timeless, somehow. Like it didn't start, it just _grew_. Like there's something natural and destined about it that has Derek dizzy with fate. He feels across the mattress for Stiles, and finds that half of the bed empty. Derek sits up, angry and perplexed, until he registers that Stiles is in the restroom, probably doing that thing where he leaves the sink running while he examines a blemish or stares at the wall. He's so stupid. He wastes water and he's _stupid_. Derek loves him. There's this thing, Derek realizes, sitting there in the dark, this _thing_ in Derek's chest, like something alive, that expands when he thinks of Stiles, thinks of his months of sleepless nights and the way he looks at Sam like he's seeing the sun rise for the first time, watches him nudging bark from the front walk into the garden with his foot, hears him humming the Power Rangers theme song in the kitchen, hears him get into an argument in the living room with somebody he ran into at work six hours ago and hasn't seen since. 

And there's something new in Stiles, too, an unfamiliar _gentleness_ that wells up in his fingertips. Derek didn't expect him to be brusque and cruel to his kid; it's that he's always been kind of selfish, a little reactive, almost tunnel-visioned. And it isn't that he's changed, or even that Derek _wanted_ him to change: it's that, however or for whatever reason, having Sam gave him a new perspective, and new priorities, and an entirely new way of approaching people. Derek can see it in the way he talks and even sits. He's softer, somehow. Derek can't think of anyone he'd rather have "knocked up." Anyone at all. 

A glance at Stiles' phone tells him it's half-past one in the morning, Mothers' Day.

They've never celebrated Mothers' Day. They don't even talk about it.

Stiles shuffles back from the bathroom, eyes passively shut. He bumps into a chair and ricochets off the corner of the bed—typical. Give him a couple minutes, he'll make it on his own, but Derek just cinches his arms around Stiles' middle and hauls him gasping and kicking onto and up the bed.

"Christ, you fucker," Stiles hisses, clingy fingers latching onto Derek's arms. "Scare me half to death."

"If that's what you want," Derek says smoothly. Stiles rolls his eyes. "You know what today is?"

"No?" Stiles grumbles, fidgeting until he's in a more comfortable position. "It's not even _today_ yet, Derek, _god_. What _time_ is it."

"It's Mothers' Day," Derek tells him.

Stiles falls quiet. Then he says dully, "Okay?" He rubs his knuckles against his eyes. "Should we have gotten Ms. McCall something? We should have gotten her something. Did we get her something last year?" He looks at Derek, sudden. "We _did_ , you made cookies. We gave her cookies. We should give her cookies, right?"

"Stiles…"

"There's still time. We can make her cookies in the morning."

"Stiles."

"There's not too—what."

" _Stiles_."

" _What_."

Stiles looks at Derek. Derek looks back. Stiles glares, suspicious. "No."

"Stiles…"

"No, and stop saying my name. Derek, _no_."

"It doesn't—I'm just—"

"We have Fathers' Day for this thing, Derek, I'm _not_ —don't _touch_ me, I'm not Sam's _mother_. _Jesus_." He squirms his way across the mattress, throws himself onto his own pillow with a growl.

"Fine, then we can call it Stiles Day."

"That is so stupid."

Derek scoffs. "Stiles, I _know_ you."

Stiles turns back over, rounds on Derek. "You _know_ me. You _know_ me? What's _that_ supposed to mean, you _know_ me. Tell me what it is you _know_ about me."

"I _know_ you, and you _can't_ look me in the eye and tell me having a holiday dedicated to you doesn't appeal to you."

Stiles squints. Opens his mouth, and shuts it. Derek raises his eyebrows smugly, not that Stiles can probably see them. "I have a birthday," Stiles finally decides, rolling back over.

"Really?" asks Derek, exasperated. Stiles sighs, but otherwise ignores him. "You carried our _child_ for nine _months_ , Stiles."

Stiles addresses him angrily. " _Ten_ months, actually, _technically_ ," o _kay_... "but that doesn't make me a—it doesn't make me a _fucking mother_ , you sexist twit."

"Really?" asks Derek again. "I'm _sexist_ now?"

"Shut up, sexist!" Stiles snaps. He's sitting up now, too pissed to lie down. "I'm not gonna commit _grand larceny_ on, like the only— _the holiday_ mothers get just because I—" He huffs, frustrated. " _You're_ the one that stays _home_ with him."

" _Lots_ of people stay home with their kids," Derek says scornfully.

"Lots of people give _birth_ to their kids," Stiles says back.

Derek sighs. Drops onto the pillow, depleted. "Fine," he says. "I know that. I just…" He drags his palms down his face in exhaustion. "I'm not trying to irritate you, Stiles, I—"

"You're not trying to irritate me," Stiles parrots flatly. "You're calling me a mother at two in the morning, but it's not to irritate me."

"I _just wanted to appreciate you_ ," snaps Derek, above the whispered level they'd kept at previously. He winces, shuts his eyes. "I just wanted to appreciate you," Derek repeats, calmer, "because you're _doing_ this with me and you're _good_ at it and it's _important_."

"Oh," says Stiles quietly. He looks pensively down at his hands in the dark and fiddles with the rumples in the comforter. Derek's still sort of fuming, and he's never understood how Stiles can go from pissed off to considering in two seconds flat. Several minutes pass in comparative silence: silence, probably, for Stiles, since his hearing is so shitty. Humans are useless. "Um, all right," Stiles says softly. "You... you can say it." Then he adds hastily, "But nothing else." 

Derek looks at him. His vision in the dark is better than Stiles', almost as better as his hearing; but it's still not perfect. Stiles is all shadows and shades of violet. Lips and eyes dark, hair in waves, pushed back from his face. Derek clarifies, "I can't say anything else?"

The corner of Stiles' mouth twitches, as Stiles moves toward him. "Fine. You can say other things, but you can only say _this_ once. You can't do anything else."

Derek's hand reaches out to meet him, slide down his back to the mild swell of his ass. "I can't do anything else," he repeats.

This time Stiles smothers a helpless, drowsy laugh in Derek's shoulder. He clarifies, "Nothing you wouldn't do any _other_ day."

"That widens my options a little." 

"You think you're _so goddamn funny_ ," Stiles comments. He's not wrong. 

Derek leans a little, brushes a kiss across Stiles' mouth. "Happy Stiles Day," he murmurs against his lips.

"Yeah," Stiles returns. "Thanks, champ. You're welcome."

"Shut _up_." Fucking douche.

::

Samuel is sitting in the high chair with a sippy cup of water and the plush parrot Stiles calls Nanners, because of the way Sam "nananana"s when he wants it: Sam's communication skills are primitive, but relatable. Second Breakfast has just come to a close, and Derek's still finishing his tea at the dick table. Late mornings are for waiting for the washer to finish, for decompressing. They are for relaxing before Derek forces Samuel to equip shoes, bundles him up, and drags him to the grocery store. Sam enjoys trips to the store, for some reason, but he's not a huge fan of the car, or a stroller, or a cart. Any sort of _contraption_ , he's not really interested in. 

Stiles doesn't really seem to believe him when he tells him this. Sam resists, but ultimately submits to, the stroller when it's Stiles. When it's Derek he bucks and wails like he's being stretched on the rack. Now, however, he's in the high chair, and that's acceptable because food was involved.

Derek's lingering a little longer than usual today. It's hot and he's enjoying the whirr of their air conditioning. He's finishing his crossword puzzle, and there's a scribbled, half-made grocery list in the newspaper margin. Samuel is utilizing his bird to the best of its abilities: Nanners is for chewing, waving, throwing, and little else. Sam starts to slam the bird repeatedly against the high chair tray. Derek adds _beef_ to his list.

The bird hits the floor. Absently, Derek picks it up and slides it back onto the high chair tray. He returns to his crossword.

The bird hits the floor. Derek glances up at Sam, who slaps his tray, open-palmed. The bird gets put back on the high chair tray, and then Derek starts to read the clue again.

The bird hits the floor. Derek puts his pen down. Sammy is kicking his little feet, fingers in his mouth. "You playing a game with me?" he asks. Sam coughs wetly, and then hums happily. A confirmation: nay, a challenge. Derek's not up for challenges this morning. Still, he's been lazy long enough. He picks up the bird and pushes it suspiciously back onto the tray. Samuel grabs at it, but Derek doesn't relinquish it.

Sam would be confused if he wasn't absolutely positive the interaction would go his way in the end. " _Buh_ ," he shouts.

"Yeah," Derek returns drily. Sam tugs hard at the bird again, and his little forehead creases with effort. Finally Derek releases the bird, sits back, and observes: Sam drags Nanners close, puts it to his lips, and stares at Derek. Derek waits. At length, Sam takes the bird and places it at the edge of the tray. "I think I'm the ball in this game," Derek says to Nanners. Nanners' only response is a blank, bead-eyed stare. Derek looks up at Sam.

Their eyes meet.

The bird hits the floor.

::

Stiles is up and dressed on a Saturday for once, standing at the front window and staring. Derek's not sure what he's looking at, but whatever it is, Derek's got something better to show him. "Stiles," Derek calls. Stiles starts. Then he turns, looks at Derek. After a moment, he smiles. Small, but real: like he's just remembered something, some joke they once shared, maybe.

"Yeah," Stiles says.

"C'mere."

After one last glance out the window, Stiles follows. Derek leads him into the kitchen and to the high chair, where Sam is covered in apple sauce. "Hey, sugar," Stiles greets him. He always greets Sam like he hasn't seen him in a week, and Sam always returns in kind: he reaches for Stiles, sticky fingers clenching and unclenching in the air.

"Look," Derek says.

"Look what. Look where." Stiles has bent and pressed a kiss onto Sam's chubby cheek. Stiles stands and scrubs at his mouth with his sleeve. Sammy slaps the high chair tray happily. 

"Look at _Sam_ ," clarifies Derek. 

Stiles readdresses the kid, who reaches out and tugs once on Stiles' shirt. Then he looks back at Derek, and gives him a dull and confrontational look. 

"His eyes darkened," Derek says, pointing. Stiles continues squinting at Derek for a second before it sinks in what he's being told. He returns to Sam, and tips his face up (Sam squirms out of his touch and knocks his parrot onto the floor) for a better look. Stiles' lips part and he looks, really looks. Samuel's eyes are a murky color, like a dark muddlement between blue and brown, like spilled watercolor. It's not an attractive color, but it's transitional.

"Oh," says Stiles, beaming. "Look at _you_ , bud. And here I'd thought you were finished changing. Thought this was your final state." He's returned the bird to Sam, so now the bird is hitting the floor again. "Oh, oh good, Nanners takes another impressive dive..." 

Derek interrupts, "He has your eyes."

Stiles stops abruptly. He looks up at Derek, wide-eyed; then back at Sam; and then back at Derek. He shuts his mouth, opens it, and shuts it again. Finally he says throatily, "Yeah, I'm gonna need you to hold me." 

He steps into Derek's arms, hands fisting in Derek's shirt. "If that's cool," adds Stiles, voice wobbly with emotion and muffled with Derek's shoulder. "Um, with you..." 

Derek spends half his days technically hugging somebody, but he doesn't often get hugs like this: he gathers Stiles up as tight as he can without causing bodily harm, and sways with him, with the momentum of this hug.

"Thank you," he thinks he hears Stiles say, but he can't be sure. 

" _Na_ nana," shrieks Samuel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> His birthday is January 12th.


	13. missed communications

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Healing sex, my friend's contraception failed, and more.

"So what can you smell?" asks the sheriff, pointing at Derek with the neck of his beer. Derek smirks instinctively; it's such a broad, meaningless question. The sheriff makes a gesture of concession. "I guess I should be more specific. You can smell… lies?"

Derek frowns thoughtfully. "Lying _has_ a smell. It's more—it's more reliable to listen to the heart. Look at their body language?" Not that Derek's an infallible lie detector, but try telling a Stilinski that. If Derek knows anything about them, it's that they tend to think, if not in black and white, then in sharply contrasted greys.

"And every person has their own smell," the sheriff prompts, to which Derek nods. "So would I smell like lies because I deal with liars at work all day?"

Oh, geez. Where to begin. "No, not—"

"Can you hear everything? Can you hear…" He looks cursorily about the room, and his eyes land on Samuel, who is plucking banana slices off his placemat and eating them thoughtfully. "Can you hear people digesting food?"

"I, uh." Derek picks a banana sliver out of Sam's hair. "I don't—I block that out."

"Can you, uh—" The sheriff makes claws with his fingers. "Pick locks?"

"I don't know how," Derek says, "but when I was fourteen I used 'em to key someone's car." It was just some kid on the football team Derek hated when he was sixteen. At the sheriff's intrigued expression, he shrugs. "Dude was an asshole, he deserved it."

::

"How come you hold it so close to your face?"

Derek looks up, vaguely startled, from the advice column. Scott has Sam on his hip, drumming his tiny palms on Scott's job interview shirt—the same job interview shirt Derek's seen him in roughly every six months since he was eighteen years old. "What, the paper?"

"Yeah, you're squinting and shi—uh, whatever."

Derek frowns at the tiny, greyscale photo of Wren Wright, and then back up at Scott. "How far do _you_ hold it."

"You're supposed to hold it at about arm's length," Scott tells him judiciously, and despite his knee-jerk reaction to roll his eyes and shove him down or something, Derek believes him. Scott worked as a receptionist in an optometrist's office for a summer once, and now his head's full of useless vision facts. When Scott learns something, he rarely forgets it.

Scowling, Derek moves the paper away from his face several inches, and the letters sludge together on the page. " _Why_?"

"Less eye strain. You can't read that?"

"I can read fine," Derek says—an answer to a question Scott did not, in fact, ask. "I've always read this close," he adds defensively.

Sam wraps his fingers around the leg of the sunglasses dangling from Scott's collar. "You ever get headaches?" Scott asks.

Just about every day, as long as he can remember—excepting a couple years when he was living out of his car with his sister, and reading nothing more than road signs and diner menus. Derek pinches his mouth into a flat line for a moment, and then says drily, "Only when my kid's godfather starts giving me an eye exam when I'm trying to read the paper."

"Watching Write Wren tell people how to handle their rambunctious in-laws doesn't exactly count as 'reading the paper,'" Scott informs him, doing an incredible job of channeling Stiles.

"Yeah, yeah," Derek says. Sam is closing his brand new two teeth on Scott's Rayban knockoffs, and Derek's nonchalant "He's eating your sunglasses" is successfully drowned out by the sound of plastic cracking.

::

Sam likes music.

Stiles sings to him—rather, he sings _near_ him, sings _at_ him, plays patty-cake in rhythm with the song. He likes songs that were popular when he went to Prom, goes to the Goo Goo Dolls more often than he'll ever admit, and Derek loses count of how many times Stiles has to cut himself off after one stanza of Nicki Minaj because he realizes too late that all his favorites are mostly swears ("I never fuh—! Um, oh. Uh, hmm").

Sam likes songs about love, songs about animals. Any song with string instruments in it, and vocal chords. Derek turns on the radio while he does dishes, and Sam sits in his playpen and claps and throws his pacifier, warbles babytalk simulating singing. Stiles calls Samuel his singsong wolf, tells him he's looking particularly lyrical this evening, hums low and gentle while he puts him in his pajamas.

Derek winds up a music box when it's time for Sam to sleep. It's porcelain, pastel blues and pinks, a rabbit and some flowers, turning and whirring. All regular, simple notes, the same thirty-five seconds of Edelweiss over and over, slowing more and more sluggish until Sam's drooling onto his parrot.

::

Stiles always looks good, even when he looks awful. He's like a tv character, Derek thinks muzzily. People on tv who are supposed to be unattractive are always still attractive; Stiles is like that. The worst he's ever looked was around two years ago, when he almost drowned in a festering swamp pit, and even covered in blackened mud and rotting flora, he looked like some kind of shit angel. The breathtaking angel of shit. "I hate swamps," he said, clawing muck away from his eyes, "and I hate _you_."

It's a hot, muggy September night, and all the windows and doors are shut tight to keep mosquitoes  and cicada screams out. The lights are off. Stiles' shirt is one of Derek's, a stretched-out henley with holes in the elbows, an ancient bloodstain, and a relatively new smear of cheese sauce. There is a flyaway macaroni in his hair, his eyes are cavernous shadows, and he hasn't actually moved in the half hour since Sammy finally lost his battle with bedtime. His feet are listlessly flung onto the coffee table. He's wearing one sock: the other one was destroyed in the food battle. 

Derek sits down next to him, and does not look at him with his other eyes. He'd be able to see him better, but then Stiles would know Derek was admiring him.

Stiles heaves a sigh, which Derek presumes is supposed to be a lamenting sort of greeting. "We're married," he tells Derek.

Derek takes a moment to absorb this information. "Yeah?"

"You married me," Stiles extrapolates. "The number of, of husbands I have _increased_ last year by a hundred percent."

"I—I guess that's technically true," concedes Derek.

"It's totally true." Stiles rolls his head to look at Derek. "You know, if this trend continues, then by our second anniversary I'll have two husbands."

Derek narrows his eyes. "Wait."

"And then four on our fourth. And—"

"Are—"

"Eight on our sixth. Then—"

"Are you saying you're going to exponentially collect spouses?"

"Sixteen on our eighth," Stiles replies.

Derek shakes his head. "That won't happen."

And Stiles looks appalled. "Are you suggesting science is _wrong_?"

"I'm suggesting _your_ science is wrong," Derek tells him. "Where are you getting your data points? Double zero is still zero."

Stiles tosses his hands up. "And now you're threatening to break up with me. What's wrong, Derek? Jealous of my thirty-one other husbands?"

Derek reaches over, gives Stiles' shoulder a shove. "Guess I don't wanna share you," he says. Stiles looks at him oddly, like he's just remembered Derek's in love with him. 

"You, um," he looks down at his own lap, almost— _shy_. "You've never had to."

::

And it isn't that Derek doesn't love Sam, and isn't grateful regularly for the fact that he exists, but it's nice for just a moment to pretend they're alone and childless, kiss Stiles in the dark of the living room with the pads of his thumbs pushing up under his shirt. They've done this a few times since the kid was born, make out like drowsy teenagers, but Stiles usually guides Derek's hands away from his torso, the scar there and the scant weight he's put on. They usually blink dumbly at each other eventually and then go to sleep, quiet and with Derek feeling like he's forgetting to do something, like there's something important he's forgotten to finish. 

Tonight is different. Tonight Stiles veritably _melts into_ Derek, hooks his fingers in the fabric of Derek's shirt, drags him closer like he's trying to merge their bodies together, like they could morph into something new and powerful and he needs them to be that tonight. It's feverish and Derek gives back everything he gets until they have to be upstairs. It gets too intense for the couch. Some kissing can happen on the couch, but this kind needs to be in their bed. Derek needs to take Stiles to their bed and hold him down there. 

They manage to get upstairs, somehow, and get their clothes off gracelessly, without breaking apart for more than maybe half a fucking second, because Derek is _desperate_. His hips are arching up to Stiles where he's straddling him, and he needs to be in Stiles in every way he can manage, so he fingers him roughly, Stiles gasping when the cold lube hits his skin, his body clenching around Derek like he's trying to chew his fingers off at the knuckle.

"Um," Stiles says, strangled, against Derek's mouth. " _Shit_." He bites Derek's lip with much more force than necessary. "C'mon, you—you _asshole_ , you—"

" _Damn_ it—" Derek rears up, pins Stiles on the bed, under him. He yanks Stiles' leg up, out of the way, thrusts his fingers into him roughly.

Stiles makes a pleading noise, his lower lip red and livid, clenched between his teeth. "Derek, _now_ , would you just—" Derek's fingers slip out of him with a wet sound, and he fumbles with the lube, swearing at it, hands shaking. He can hardly focus on slicking up his cock when Stiles' eyes, wide and hungry, are tracking his every move, his hand grabbing idly at his balls. "Hurry up," Stiles begs, voice cracking, "mm _please_. You haven't _touched_ me in—I've been—" and then, " _uh_ ," when Derek grabs his hips hard enough that there will probably be bruises in the morning. Drags him down the bed to him, and works the head of his dick into him. It wrings a gasp out of Stiles like someone just plunged into him and wrapped their hand around his heart. "Fuck—fuckfuck, dude—" 

Derek doesn't even have the capacity to be self-conscious about the sounds he's making as he pushes his way inside, where he hasn't been in months, far too long. And Stiles is talking, filthy things, hands tugging at Derek's shoulders.

"C'mon, baby, _fuck_ me," he says, wretched and hushed and coarse, " _give_ it to me, fill me _up_ —"

Derek hasn't even bottomed out yet, wanting to go slow, since it's been so long, but he pulls back, hips stuttering, and then slams back in, making Stiles' toes curl where his ankles are crossed behind Derek's back. The force of it brings a sharp noise out of Stiles, almost a yelp that would be funny if it wasn't so erotic. Derek's biased by his own desperate need to be inside Stiles like this, his irrational desire to crawl under his skin. Stiles drops one foot to the bed, braces himself against the sheets. The next time Derek shoves in, Stiles pushes ineptly up to meet him, and then there's a rhythm. Maybe a melody, a stunted, loping beat. Stiles' breathing is rapid and uneven, his heart is pounding in Derek's ears, and it seems like their bedroom, in their house, in Beacon Hills, is—the center of the universe. Which, even as Derek's feeling it, cognitively, he knows it's stupid. It's so stupid, Stiles cackles mindlessly. A sort of deranged passion. Derek can't even summon the brain cells it would take to tell him to shut the fuck up.

" _God_ , yeah," Stiles rasps, eyes rolling and welling from it. "A little more, mm—wait—" He grabs at Derek's hips, and his hands slip a little, slick with sweat, but he tries again and pulls the two of them together at a new angle. "Oh, like _that_ , I _missed_ this, I—" He's talking, he keeps talking, and Derek looks at him, makes eye contact because it makes it so much hotter to see what he's doing to Stiles. Stiles drags in a breath and says, tight and hoarse, "Fuck me harder." Derek shoves in hard enough to knock the headboard into the blinds, and Stiles' teeth grit. " _Yes._ I wanna feel you for _weeks_."

Derek lets his eyes phase blue, bares his teeth when Stiles' fingernails dig like claws in his flesh. He leans down to Stiles when he's close, when they're both close, and Stiles puts his arms around Derek's neck with jerky, robotic movements. Derek can't concentrate enough to keep the rent scratches on his back from healing. He presses their foreheads together, and when Stiles comes, Derek muffles his shouts with his fingers.

Stiles comes down from his orgasm with hiccuping, wheezing sobs. Derek slows his roll, watches his face for a moment. Still moving. A deep, lazy grin spreads across Stiles' face; it's shivery, but it's smug. He asks, "You gonna come for me?"

"In a second," Derek scrounges up.

"Can you—can you pick up the pace, I—"

"Wh—what, do you have someplace to _be_?" Stiles laughs joyously, nods, and then he takes Derek's jaw in his fingers, kisses him and kisses him, and Derek comes with Stiles lapping breathlessly at his lips.

The orgasm leaves them both humming, and Derek stays there, shaking, watching Stiles jolt through his own aftershocks. His eyes flutter shut, and he drops his head back, spent. The pillows were knocked all over the place somewhere in the midst of this, and Stiles reaches weakly up with one hand to drag one under his head. 

"You're not nodding off with my dick still in your ass," Derek says.

"Don' tell me what to do," Stiles mumbles. 

"You have to shower, at least."

" _What_ did I just say."

"Stiles." 

"Mm, no."

"Hey." Stiles sighs, put upon. Then, he tears his eyes open. Derek ducks under his chin, noses at his throat, where the heat is and where he seems to carry Derek around in scent form. "Love you," Derek says. 

"Oh," Stiles sighs. He seems almost surprised by that. Derek's not sure what he was expecting, but it clearly wasn't that. "Um, I—I love you." He says this wonderingly. His eyes are—they're pretty. Derek feels a familiar expansive swelling sensation in his chest. Stiles adds, " _Too_. Also."

"Right."

"Uh huh. Now—now get your dick out of my ass."

::  

Stiles is sitting cross-legged on the living room floor with Samuel, in a hoodie that's falling unceremoniously off one shoulder. There's a smattering of dry cheerios on the hardwood between them. "You're really good at eating," Stiles tells Sammy, who looks up at him emptily. His nose is running. "Like, _really_ good at it."

"What're you doing," Derek asks, standing before them. Sam smiles at Derek, all gums and two teeth and mushed cereal, and it's so mindless and disgusting that Derek can't help but grin back.

"Eating cheerios," answers Stiles matter-of-factly. He pops one in his mouth like he's making a point.  "Yum. N'they're good for your heart. S'why Grampa eats 'em. Right, sugar?" Sam picks up a cheerio and shows it to Stiles. Stiles beams at him, delighted. "Is that for _me_? God, I dunno what to _say_."

Derek realizes he's knelt beside Stiles when his arms slide around Stiles' slender waist, Stiles humming with pleasant surprise. "You still feeling me?" he mumbles, nosing along Stiles' jaw, breathing him in. After a few seconds of silence, Stiles' heart ratchets up.

He swallows. "I have no idea what you're talking about," Stiles mutters back, "a foot away from this infant."

There's nothing wrong with making love, Derek thinks, smirking when Stiles pushes him away. After all, it's one of the myriad equally stupid reasons Sam exists. Still, Derek drops the subject. He sits on the floor with them, accepts a cheerio from Samuel ("Delicious. Thank you."), and listens to Stiles list the colors Derek is wearing.

::

Derek gets a phone call at three o'clock in the morning—he and Stiles figured out pretty quickly how to put their phones on vibrate and keep them under their pillows—that startles him out of a dream where Stiles is listening to a music box in a mud puddle. He answers the phone hoarse and bleary, and then he doesn't comprehend whatever is said to him in return.

"What?" he rasps. Stiles mumbles sleepily, turns over to face him, eyes still shut.

"I _said_ ," says Boyd's voice, "Monica is pregnant."

"Pregnant?" Derek repeats.

Stiles shoots bolt upright. " _Who's_ pregnant."

"Boyd," Derek tells him. Stiles boggles. "I mean, his girlfriend is."

"Oh," Stiles says. "I was gonna _say_."

"I need you to tell me what to do," Boyd goes on. "I can't react, I don't even know how I feel."

"I had that once," Stiles offers, ear pressed against the back of Derek's cell phone. "I think I reacted by throwing lacrosse balls at Scott." Derek shoves him away, sending him careening back into the pillows, and switches ears.

"When did you find out?"

"She missed her period," says Boyd. "She just thought it was late. Then we forgot. Then she remembered when it was time for another period. Then she took a test. I can't raise a baby."

Derek rubs his temples. "Test could be false positive."

"She took seven," Boyd snaps. Then he inhales, exhales. "Sorry. I can't afford a baby. I can't do this."

"Yeah, you can," Derek tells him. "If she decides to keep it, we'll help you. You can have Sammy's old clothes."

"What if _we_ need those," Stiles hisses.

"You planning on losing some weight?" Derek hisses back.

"Where am I gonna put it?" Boyd wants to know. "What'll I feed it? What—?"

"Boyd, you're not having it in ten minutes," Stiles says firmly into the phone.  "Come over, Derek'll make you eggs." 

"Eggs?"

"Yes, _eggs_. God, what _is_ it with you people? Eggs aren't a complicated concept."

::

Scott starts seeing a woman named Angelica.

"Her dad worked with my mom when I was a kid," he tells Derek over a beer one afternoon, Sam dunking his entire fist into a small jar of apple sauce, and then mouthing the sludge off his skin. It's disgusting, but not even pureed steak makes him this happy. "This other kid Manny used to pull her hair and call her Fatgelica, so me and her would hide from him."

"How romantic," Derek says.

"You're right, I should have just puked black crap all over the floor in front of her," Scott replies mildly.

Derek arches an eyebrow at the editorial section. "If it's right, it's right."

The oven timer goes off, and Sammy drops his jar. It clatters across the floor, and the cat skitters out of the room. "Uh-oh," shrugs Sam plaintively.

::

Stiles, Derek, Boyd, and Lydia take Sam to the park, where Lydia judiciously scopes out all the young parents there with their various-aged children.

A woman appears on the crest of the hill opposite them with her child leading her on a leash. Boyd sits up, eyes locked on her. "What in the _hell_?"

Sammy shrieks from the swingset, where Stiles is pushing him.

"That lady's got her kid on a _leash_ ," he tells Derek. When he doesn't get a reaction, he repeats the news to Lydia. She smirks.

"Sometimes it's easier to harness your offspring than actually parent them," she says loftily.

"Maybe kid's rambunctious," Derek offers, watching Sam bean Stiles in the head with his parrot. "You don't know what that woman has to go through."

"A _leash_ , though," Boyd exaggerates. "Thought that was what kids had _hands_ for."

Derek's cousin Carla had a leash. She was prone to tantrums, and often ran away from her dad in stores, on the street. She'd probably heal if she was hurt, be able to fight back if she was grabbed, but that's not a risk any of the Hales was willing to make. She was often harnessed and tied to shopping carts, little sneakers squeaking on the tile while she tried unsuccessfully to run into the clothing racks.

With sixteen cousins, two siblings walking, and one sibling still a baby, Carla's best bet for safety was the leash, which acted as a third arm for whoever was in charge of her supervision. (Usually Derek, around the holidays. God, she was a hellion, for like three years running. Literally running. All the time.)

Stiles lifts Sam out of the swing, carries him over to the shady bench where Lydia is drinking coffee and Boyd is watching the woman unleash her child onto the playground. The kid promptly kicks over someone's sand castle. There's a bunch of screaming, and then the children are forcibly separated by respective parents. It's very Jerry Springer. Samuel and Stiles find the whole thing pretty entertaining. 

"I recant my earlier statement," Boyd says, pinched. "Kids have hands so you can handcuff 'em."

::

Sam takes his first steps two days before his first birthday, while Stiles is in the bathroom with a stomach virus and Derek is windexing the front bay window. Derek hears tiny footsteps and turns around just in time to see Sam trip, fall on his face, and scare himself into beta form.

Then he starts crying because his claws are irreparably snagged in the carpet.

As far as milestones go, Derek figures it's Sam's smoothest yet.

::

He lets Sam hang on his fingers for balance, leads him out around the house to visit Laura's grave on her birthday. "This is your aunt," he tells Sam.

Sam stamps his foot.

"No, not ant," Derek corrects. " _Aunt_." 

Vines of morning glories are draped across the fence by now, and poppies well up from all the corners of the tiny gravesite. Sam falls quiet, wobbles carefully around the gravestone. His foot brushes a leaf of aconite, and he sneezes violently.

"Her name was Laura, and she didn't trust the ocean," says Derek at Sammy. "We weren't close by choice, but she was all I had, for a while. Don't put that in your mouth." He makes Sam put down a pillbug. "Family is important," Derek finishes.

Sam doesn't understand him, strictly, but after Derek stops talking, he pulls at Derek's belt loops until he picks him up. He rests his chin on Derek's shoulder. Derek figures, close enough.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk


	14. oops i did it again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My kid is a snowflake, I've been shoved out of denial, and more.

Stiles insists, swears up, down, left, and right, that Sam's first word is "sugar." Which—at the rate that Stiles calls him that, isn't entirely an illogical conclusion. But Derek spends all day, every day, with this kid and he maintains Sam said "boat" last month.

It's an ongoing argument. Derek is on the "I think I would know" side, while Stiles is on Team "If he said that last month, wouldn't you have _called_ me or mentioned it at least _once_?" at which point Derek joins the "I swear I did; you probably just forgot" forces, and Stiles counters by bopping him in the forehead with the heel of his palm, which makes Sam laugh, which makes Scott laugh, which makes Stiles laugh, which makes Derek forget what they were talking about.

Words. Sam's first word. Right.

It was "boat."

Derek would know.

::

Derek drives to meet Stiles for lunch one day, the kid burbling away in a restaurant high chair. He's just preemptively ordered Stiles a tea with no lemon when the man in question drops into the booth across the table from Derek and flings a wrinkled ten at him.

Derek stares at it. "Did I make it rain?" he asks drily.

Stiles grins in spite of the fact that he clearly made up his mind he wasn't going to. "You win. You called it," he says by way of explanation. "Jackson just moved out."

This is no surprise. They came separately to the baby's first birthday party, each with a gift card to Babies R Us. Lydia's was for sixty dollars. Jackson's was for sixty-one. The closest thing to interacting Derek saw between them was when Sam walked to Scott instead of Jackson, and Lydia cooed, "Good boy."

"Good," Derek says to Stiles as the waitress puts wet glasses of tea in front of them. "Was getting tired of them using our toddler as a pawn in their weird…" He squints, gestures emptily, the word escaping him.

"Relationbattleship," Stiles offers. That'll work. "I dunno," he goes on; "At least we're getting a nice toddler bed out of it."

There is that. It's not like they can't afford a toddler bed; it's just nice to have it at the expense of an on-again-off-again. Stiles has one picked out already, and Derek was pleasantly surprised to discover that it wasn't a bullshit race car bed. Just a normal one. Sturdy wood. It'll be good, because now that he's mobile, Sam's started climbing out of his crib at night and trying to get into bed with Stiles. Stiles doesn't mind briskly putting him back to bed—or if he does, he hasn't said anything—but he worries that Sam'll dash his brains out one of these nights trying to divebomb over the bars. Derek isn't as concerned as he would be if Sam was human.

Sammy authoritatively points at the saltshaker. "Salt!" says Stiles obligingly.

"Bop," repeats Sam.

"What's Lydia going to do with the engagement ring?" Derek asks.

Stiles smiles fondly. "Keep it, probably. Next time they get engaged, she'll want a new one."

"Bigger diamond?"

" _No_ , no," insists Stiles. "That's tacky. She'll want _more_ diamonds."

::

That Saturday night, Derek wakes to Sam sniffling on the other side of the bed and tugging on the bedclothes. Instead of getting up and carrying him out of the room, Stiles sighs sleepily, takes his wrists, and draws him up onto the bed. He nudges him into the center of the mattress, nestles him against Derek's side. Curls around them both. Burrows under the blankets and breathes in Sam's hair.

Sam's toes twitch, and he mumbles in his sleep, and Derek breathes in and out, awake for a couple hours, at least. Surrounded by family and pillows and the sound of Stiles halfheartedly and drowsily humming music from video games, thumb working soft circles on Sam's back.

"We _made_ this," Derek thinks bleakly, staring down at Stiles and Sam, Sam and Stiles. Just a baby, but a whole person, growing and learning, all with Derek's teeth and Stiles' eyes. Sam has fears—bodies of water, shadows—and desires—a xylophone. He has opinions: birds are funny, Stiles is perfect, clothes are nice, Melissa McCall is beautiful. Derek helped _make_ that.

He talks. Not fluently, but "Papa," he calls Stiles, and "Nanna," he calls his parrot, and the bath he calls " _No_." He tries to keep cloth napkins at restaurants ("Poppy, poppy, mine," he says) and wails when they must leave them behind (" _Mine, peas_ "), and he stares at waiters like they emerged from the floor.

"Look at all the trees, Sammy," Stiles sometimes says in the car, and, "Yeah," Sam says thoughtfully, fingers outstretched toward the window.

While Derek cuts up chicken breast to put in a quesadilla, Sam weaves around and around his shins and chants, "Dada, Dadada, eat."

He calls Scott 'Spot' and cries for Allison whenever he smells peaches. One day he tried to walk under the coffee table and he was no longer short enough for success. He _bawled_ for Stiles; they heard his little sock feet thudding from the living room and he catapulted himself into Stiles' lap at the dick table. "Aw," crooned Stiles sadly; "you smacked your little melon, here, didn't you?"

Ten minutes later he'd dissolved into sullen hiccups and rasping, "Owwie. _Ow_."

To which Stiles returned, "Ow! Mean table brained you for _no reason_. We'll destroy it, get you one with memory foam stapled to the corners."

Sam replied, "Ow."

Sammy likes Hawaiian punch and strawberry ice cream and spaghetti and cherry chip cookies. He resolutely _will not_ ride in the cart at the grocery store; in fact, to get him to go at all, Derek must bribe him with raisins.

He picks out clothes, now; for best results, assemble two outfits and let him choose between them. To take an impossibly long time getting him ready before you can leave the house, but make him unfeasibly happy, open the closet and ask him what he would like to wear. He chooses at least four shirts, tries to wear two different socks. He does insist on matching shoes, but he wants them on the wrong feet. Screeches angrily if you try to switch them.

After naps, he crawls onto Derek's knee and hides his face in his front. Mutters "Daddy" to him while Derek rubs his back.

Derek spends mornings negotiating fruitlessly with him, afternoons figuring out dinner and exercising, evenings feeding Stiles and Sam, and sometimes he sits on the basement steps and puts his head between his knees and realizes that he has a family.

He _made_ it.

::

Boyd graduates from college.

Stiles misses him getting his diploma because he's in the bathroom.

Sam misses it because he's on the floor, under the bleachers.

Derek misses it because he's chasing Sam.

Scott gets pictures of both events.

::

Stiles' gut reaction to seeing Derek wearing his brand-new grocery store reading glasses is to hone in on him like a wolf circling a carcass. "You, uh." He swallows. "You having trouble seeing things? Lookin'? With, with your eyes?"

Derek blinks at him, blushes under the intensity of the attention, and then pointedly readdresses the cookbook. "It happens," he says drily.

"I'm, just." He looks back up at him, unimpressed, over the horn him of the glasses, and Stiles bites his tongue. Strangled, Stiles tells him, "God, you're really hot."

Derek feels his palms heat up so quickly that for a second he thinks he already turned on the stove. "I was gonna make pineapple upside-down, um—" Derek manages as Stiles crowds him against the stove.

"Mmm, make it later," he hums against Derek's neck, fingers pushing up his shirt, under the waistband of his shorts. "Now tell me to keep my voice down."

"You really _should_ keep your voice down." Derek rolls his eyes upwards, avoiding watching Stiles unbuckling his belt one-handed. "There's, um, we—"

"Say, 'This is due back in two weeks,' say it sternly."

" _Stiles_."

Stiles grins, unbridled, and swivels his wrist, slides a hand into his pants. "Off-script, but still doing it for me," he says, and then leans to his right, for the junk drawer. They used to fuck in the kitchen a lot, about a year ago. They used to keep lube in every room of the house. One time they fucked so abruptly on the couch that Stiles' vial of mountain ash fell out of his jeans pocket and spilled between the cushions, and Derek was shoved onto the floor by an unreachable force. Stiles laughed so hard he gave himself the hiccups. "I wanna fuck you on the table," he says. "Can I fuck you on the table?"

Derek shivers.

::

They don't make it to the table.

Derek does not recommend getting fucked on your knees because your glasses will fall off your face and get scratched on the floor.

::

"What do you do for contraception when you're at risk for magical, ill-precedented man-preg?" Stiles asks, out of the blue one day when he and Derek are out walking before the morning fog's dissipated. Stiles has a stroller, but Sam climbed out, and is trying to catch a squirrel.

"Condoms," Derek suggests. "The pull-out method…" 

"Yeah," Stiles says, smirking, veering the stroller so it runs over Derek's foot, " _that's_ probably how it works. In which case," he adds wryly, "maybe this wouldn't be such a problem if we didn't both like barebacking so much." Sam's shriek echoes on the still air. "Cool, a pinecone! Don't eat it, buddy." Sam launches a pinecone across the sidewalk. "No, for real, Lydia and I were talking about it and—"

Derek blanches, gives Stiles' biceps a shove. "You talk to _Lydia_ about this stuff?"

"Oh," says Stiles blithely, "you must be confused. You see, I'm talking about Lydia _Martin_." Derek squints. "It's _Lydia_ , Derek, of _course_ we talk about this stuff. Where's the shame in _that_?" Stiles steps smoothly around Derek, follows the kid. "You should be worried if we _aren't_ talking about this stuff—sugar, do _not eat that_! Gross!"

Derek watches him wrestle another pine cone away from the kid, who has an impressive hold on it. You can hear the distinct sound of claws rending through the spines when Stiles finally wins.

"We _don't_ eat pine cones."

Sam starts crying.

::

"I was _saying_ , the other, earlier _on_ ," Stiles pants, and then gasps, because Derek's hands tighten on his ass. Derek really likes Stiles' ass. "It doesn't happen because you, like, ah—you fertilized an egg, or whatever—"

Derek hums forcefully, and Stiles twitches, reactive. Fists a hand in Derek's hair.

"I, I think it's, because it's magic, it's just, oh—" he takes in a gulp of air, and then groans, "oh, god, I'm gonna—"

He spills into Derek's mouth, and somewhere behind the haze, Derek hears Stiles' head knock against the bathroom door, his molars grind together. Derek's not as good at this as Stiles is—Stiles can take it straight back in his throat, until he's choking around it. "Can" isn't even the right word. Stiles likes it. He _likes_ that.

And Derek likes Stiles. He likes him _so much_. He's got a hand wrapped around the base of Stiles' dick, come all in his beard, and a cooling wet spot in his shorts. His brain's a little explodey.

"Jesus," sighs Stiles, knees wobbling. Derek grabs one, steadies him. "Mmm. D'you need me to…?"

Derek shakes his head. Scrapes semen off his lip with his front teeth. Derek could just eat that stuff all day.

Stiles says something, slurs it, fingers tightening just for a second in Derek's hair, like he's trying to communicate something. Derek doesn't know what he said, though.

Everything is thick with the scent of sex, Derek's orgasm still crinkling the edges of his mind. He really likes Stiles' legs. He opens his mouth to respond, and then nuzzles into Stiles' thigh. If whatever Stiles said was important, he'll say it again later.

::

Less than a week later, Stiles has a day off from work, and he elects to use it to go talk to Deaton.

"I can take Sammy to get a checkup and talk theories with the doc," he says, tucking in his shirt. It's a bad habit he's picked up, presumably from watching golf. Derek hates it. "You get a day off from parenthood," Stiles continues. "Go do what you did before we procreated."

What _did_ he do? Derek doesn't really remember. He mulls it over while he absentmindedly follows Stiles around the house. He thinks he might have done a jigsaw puzzle once. Another time, he and Stiles got their hands on some pot brownies and Derek evidently cut down three trees in the middle of the night. They haven't actually run out of firewood from it yet.

He had a lot of sex and slept a lot, probably. Stiles is buttoning up a purple sweater for Sam—the kid's favorite color—in the front entryway when Derek snaps his fingers. "I'll hang out with Boyd," he announces with fervor.

"Hay mout _Boyb_ ," Sam says back.

"Yep, hang out with Boyd," Stiles agrees. "Monica's, what? Two months along? Three?"

"Should be four or five, now," Derek corrects. "Considering she missed two periods before she took the tests."

"Oh, right." Stiles kneels to strap Sammy into the stroller. "I forgot."

"Name out _Boyd_."

"Don't envy _them_ ," Derek goes on, folding his glasses. "Trying to fluff up a nest for a new kid, don't even know what they're doing." The months leading up to Sam's introduction to the world are a huge blur of anxiety and confusion. Despite having been given a book from the sheriff on it, Derek had no idea what to expect. Frankly, he's still surprised Sam's a normal baby, alive and functioning and wearing a hat. _Relieved_ , but surprised nonetheless. It's like he got pulled over and instead of a ticket, he was handed a candy bar. "Stressful."

"Yeah," Stiles says to Sam's parrot. "Okay. Ready, Sam?"

"Ready hame Boyd?"

"No, your daddy's going to see Boyd. You and I are going to the doctor."

"Dopter."

At the end of the driveway, Sam chucks his parrot out of the stroller.  

::

The couch is the picture of repose when Derek gets to Monica and Boyd's apartment.

It's a nice place, Derek thinks; not the barking bachelor pad squalor Scott and Isaac have themselves accustomed to, nor the stupidity that is Lydia's condo. Derek's never understood vaulted ceilings, himself. A whole bunch of space it's physically impossible to fill. It makes him feel like he's in the Sistine fucking Chapel. So a two-bedroom walkup with local laundry facilities suits Derek just fine.

"Derek!" crows Erica from the couch. She and Monica have their feet jammed into the same tiny foot bath thing, and it's being investigated by Monica's hairless cat. Cora has her head in Monica's shrinking lap. She's snapchatting. "We're watching a movie," Erica goes on. "You like those."

"What movie is it." Derek steps around the entertainment center and instinctively flinches at the sight of a lumpy-headed cartoon baby. It's the Rugrats movie. "You've got to be kidding."

"It's research for child development," Monica explains, and then all three of them burst into hysterical laughter. _Women_. Derek rolls his eyes, follows his nose to the kitchen.

Boyd's chopping celery. "Hey, Derek," he says. "No baby today?"

"He's at Deaton's. Look—" He gestures to the celery. "Seriously?" He _knew_ Derek would be there. This is just to be shitty. 

"Not everyone breaks out in hives and has a hilarious tantrum when they eat celery," returns Boyd. He makes a show of popping a piece into his mouth with a crunch, and Derek glares at him.

::

Around three or so, Stiles calls Derek, asks him to come pick him and Sam up from the clinic, which Derek accepts immediately because it's started to sleet since he got to Boyd and Monica's, and Sammy inherited Stiles' propensity for getting cold. It takes some time, but he finally manages to extract himself from the apartment ("You're gonna miss the emotional climax," Cora says. "Take some of this stir-fry," Boyd says. "Yeah, savor the anaphylaxis," Erica says. "Oh my god, you're so tall, hug me," Monica says) and drive to Deaton's.

Inside, Sam is in a wire pen on a floor of newspapers, surrounded by a litter of fascinated, fluffy St. Bernard puppies. "Daddy," he squeals, "goggy!"

"Dogs," he agrees, bending to press a palm onto the mother's head. Her tag says _Rosie_. "So many big dogs," he says to Sam, which is a pointless thing to say. Derek knows this. It's easy to give in to that instinct to say pointless shit to somebody who's new to the language. He makes up for it: "Do you like these dogs?"

"Yeah! Woof _woof_ ," answers Samuel, just before a puppy bowls him over. Stiles is wringing his hands nearby, something Derek attributes to the comparative size of the dogs. (Sam tries to pick one up; it's the size of him.) But Stiles is looking at Derek.

"Um, hey," he says. "You should come into the doc's office. For a sec."

::

The office is cramped, barely enough room for the desk it houses. The walls are covered completely with huge wooden bookcases, crammed full of textbooks and loose papers and parchments bound with leather. There's an entire shelf dedicated to the "The Cat Who…" series.

Dust is like a faint layer of fog in the streams of daylight that break through the curtains. It's about as cliché Dr. Deaton could possibly make his office, and Derek could not roll his eyes hard enough to indicate the level of irritation he feels just walking in here. It's probably because the whole place smells like dogs, sounds like dogs, dogs barking and dog drool. Sam can be heard giggling and announcing, "Goggy _woof_ " through the door. Derek wishes his kid was a cat person.

Stiles makes himself stop wringing his hands, brings them out into the air to give them some distance from each other; then he fists them and drops them, bouncing, against the outside of his thighs. The brief display of anxious fidgeting has Derek eyeing him suspiciously. Next Stiles tries to force Derek into a metal chair next to the desk. There's a map on it; Derek picks it up, and then sits with it in his lap, disgruntled. "Um," Stiles says, awkward.

Something occurs to Derek, and he impulsively crinkles the map in his hands: "Is he okay?"

"He's fine," Stiles assures him quickly, "Sammy's fine. It's not... Derek, chill, the doc's probably gonna have a conniption fit if you keep fucking up his map."

"It's fine," Deaton says pleasantly. "It's a reprint. He's doing me a favor." Derek has no idea what that means. 

The next minute would ring with silence if Derek could not hear every single, solitary dog at the clinic, his kid included, barking; and the chair seems specifically designed to be as uncomfortable as possible. As he uncrosses his legs, and then recrosses them the other way, Stiles considers the second chair, but it's so full of stacks of paper that he deems it too much of a hassle, and settles on his knees by Derek's feet.  "So, um," Stiles is saying, "You know that, uh, that thing we're doing, where we raise, like, a family together and shit?"

Derek purses his lips and narrows his eyes. Sometimes he can feel his mother's face happening on his own face. "I _think_ so," he answers aridly.

"Well, I like that," Stiles tells him. On the other side of the door, Sam announces, " _Not_ a goggy," which captures Derek's attention. Stiles tugs on his pant leg urgently. "I like doing that... Do you?"

Does he _like_ it? What kind of question is that? Is he checking in to see if Derek's filed for divorce or something? "It has its charms," says Derek. "Stiles, what..."

"Is that a yes?"

Stiles' eyes are wide and earnest. "Yes," says Derek. He glances at Deaton, whose face is imperceptible. 

"Good," Stiles says with genuine relief. "So, since we, um, both enjoy being a family... maybe it _stands to reason_ that it would be good news if it were to..." 

The world slows down. Deaton, as far as Derek is concerned, has vaporized. "Stiles," Derek says, heart thundering. 

"Ha-happen again? Some more?" Stiles gulps. "Because, um. I'm, we're gonna have another one."

" _Stiles_." Derek looks up at Deaton, who smiles pleasantly, the way you smile when you see a friend find a dollar on the sidewalk. "Are you—"

"In a predetermined length of time..."

"I—" The map hits the floor. "Are you—are you serious?" Derek is tingling all over."

"Yeah," says Stiles. "Yes. I'm—I know you weren't planning on this," asserts Stiles frantically, "and you were literally _just saying_ how great it was that this wasn't happening, bec—but—god, jesus, I don't—" He gulps, shakes his head. "I mean, this is—I want—" Stiles stops and hums helplessly when Derek cups his face in his hands and kisses him, Derek's sunk onto his knees on the floor and kissed him, hard and lingering.

"You're not messing with me," Derek confirms.

" _No_ ," Stiles breathes. " _God_ , no. I'm not crying, either. D-Deaton says he'll help us out again—"

"I'm doing different tests this time," Deaton announces, businesslike, from the window. "I'd like to—" 

The conversation is cut short, then, because Sam knocks the pen down and all the dogs escape.

::

Sleet torrents down the windshield of the dim car, and Stiles has been pretending his sniffles are from the cold since they left the clinic. Sam's in his car seat in the back, having cried himself to sleep. "I know you didn't want this, we didn't plan for any of this," Stiles is telling Derek again in a frenetic whisper, "but jesus christ, dude, you have no idea how much I _want_ this."

Derek nods, considers his words seriously.

Stiles misinterprets the silence—or maybe he's just panicked enough for less than two seconds to be too long. "Please tell me I'm not—"

"I wasn't expecting Sam," Derek finally says, interrupting him. "But I also wasn't expecting you and Scott." He addresses Stiles, and finds him blanched and teary-eyed. Derek thumbs a tear from under his eye. "And look at me now." Stiles bites his lips together. Derek says, "We're family now. We'll make this work."

"We always do," says Stiles hopefully, and then swears under his breath. "I just jinxed it, didn't I."

Derek promises firmly, "It isn't jinxing if it's the truth."

"I love you." He wraps his fingers around Derek's wrist, thumb working his pulse point insistantly. "I really do."

"I love you," Derek returns, " _obviously_."

"God, what—? You are such a prick." He's not wrong. Derek pulls him close and puts their foreheads together. (In the back seat, Sam sighs in his sleep, "Key cat." Thank god.) "So I'm not—" Stiles whispers. "Tell me I'm not alone in this."

A request for explicit reassurance. Derek reaches across the console, slides one hand under Stiles' shirt—thankfully it became untucked at some point—and presses it against Stiles' stomach—and Stiles _melts_. There's something _in_ there, some continually perplexing, delicious manifestation of everything Derek does to Stiles. It's most likely all in his head, borne of rain and his sleeping kid and their fraught emotions, but all the same he feels a sharp connection there. Stiles clings to Derek's hand, bracing it there. "Never," Derek says. "Never."

::

There's oldies music playing softly in the kitchen, some kind of Righteous Brothers, Five Keys, Otis Redding sort of ballad with changing chords and whiny lyrics: Sam's favorite genre of music. Stiles tapped Percy Sledge into Pandora maybe under a month ago and Sam's been on a high ever since. Sleeps somewhat better, eats all his food. Put on a few pounds. Stiles puts peas into Sammy's mouth, and does his best to keep them in his mouth.

Derek prefers music from this century. He tried diligently to interest Sam in some more modern picks—even tried to split the difference with some Temptations reunion shit from the seventies, but he would not be swayed. In any case, it sort of grows on you. Sam's got a horrendous sense of rhythm, even for a baby, but he claps enthusiastically for Aretha Franklin. It's hard to take something away from a baby. Especially a baby who recognizes Etta James.

There's a poster of the Supremes up in Sam's nursery, courtesy of his godfather.

"I tried to tell him," Stiles says to Derek, eyes on Sammy's round-cheeked attempts to consume food neatly.

"Tell him what."

Stiles beams at Derek, sarcasm out of reach, and Derek gets it. Sam seems to understand lots of words, but complex ideas are unsurprisingly a little beyond him. He still hasn't really grasped where the groceries go after Derek makes dinner. Pregnancy is probably something he couldn't even begin to understand.

"I don't suppose he followed."

"Not even slightly," says Stiles obligingly. "The best I could get out of him was showing him a picture book about babies and asking him where the baby was. He slapped the baby." Sam demandingly tugs on Stiles' sleeve, wanting more peas. "I mean, well, he slapped the page, but it was a page with a baby on it, so." Stiles feeds him a spoonful, and then watches ninety percent of it droop down his chin. "You're doing this on purpose," Stiles accuses him.

Sam bursts out with bubbly baby laughter, peas suddenly decorating Stiles' shirt.

"This one's getting named after _you_ ," Stiles warns Derek, scraping at his front with a napkin, and Derek instinctively groans, rolls his eyes. "Keep it up, douchebag," Stiles says. "If it's another boy, I'm naming him Glenn."

"I _hate_ Glenn," Derek tells him.

It is Stiles' turn to roll his eyes.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes yes i know you "totally knew it" good job


	15. not that innocent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My kid is a dog, my husband looks pretty good I guess, I told you about babies bro, and more.

For the next few weeks, Sam is a dog.

Derek spends a lot of time trying and failing to convince him to walk on his "hind legs." Gladys lets him eat bits of fruit and dry cereal out of a bowl on the patio floor, which he does without his hands, Derek watching with dissipating embarrassment from the flower bed. Scott instructs him to roll over, sometimes, and on Scott's afternoons to watch him, Derek is told Sam takes his nap curled up tight on the dog's large, corduroy pillow. (He doesn't know where the dog sleeps, but if Sam's the boss of anyone, it's that dog.) The sheriff has entire conversations with Sam that are nothing but barking. Sam _shakes_ dry after baths, gets water on the ceiling if Derek doesn't wrap him in a towel quickly enough, and he's had four different time-outs just for burying things in the back yard.

"May-May," he says to Scott's mother, tugging on her scrubs, and she kneels to listen to him. "Puppy tay," he tells her confidentially. "Arf."

"You're a _puppy_ today?" she whispers back. She's fluent in toddler. "But you were a puppy _last_ week, remember?"

He barks at her again, not quite old enough to listen to reason, or to be aware how long he's been a dog. Derek is hyperaware of how long Sam's been a dog. He's aware enough for the both of them.

Tired after work, Stiles pinches Sam's cheek—Derek doesn't think Stiles is even aware he does this; probably he gets it from his Polish grandmother—and says, "Sammy, I've had a long day. Can you not be a puppy tonight? Be my baby again?" He holds out his arms invitingly.

Sam obliges, even though Derek implores him to reestablish his humanity before every meal, even though puppies sometimes use forks, even though it's difficult to play his plastic xylophone with his mouth. He becomes human again, climbs into Stiles' lap on the couch. Together they watch movies—about dogs, always about dogs—or Stiles says to Derek, "Daddy, will you read to us?"

And Derek does, careful to read only about dogs, because if any other animal is there instead, Sam shouts, "Goggy," or barks sadly, and reading time is solely about Sam (Derek thinks, as if every other time isn't solely about Sam).

The Poky Little Puppy. Hairy Maclary. Clifford the Big Red Dog. Go Dog Go, to Stiles' delight. Or Goldilocks and the Three Dogs. Little Bo Peep lost her puppy, the Very Hungry Dog, Where the Wild Dogs Are.

It's exhausting, but one morning Sam wakes up and forgets he's a dog until lunch. The next day he forgets until bathtime. The day after that is blessedly human—excepting a situation where Sam throws a hissy fit and shifts in the kitchen—and Sam gently mumbles some misappropriation of the Itsy-Bitsy Spider to Monica and Kira on command. No barking takes place for the duration of the song.

Derek silently raises his eyes to the heavens and thanks the empty, meaningless sky for his tiny, mostly human child.

::

It's Tuesday, and Stiles has this Tuesday off. He and Derek made plans to go out and buy paint, for the extra bedroom that now needs to prepare itself for Second Kid. Derek assumed they'd paint it blue, like Sam's, but Stiles wants something different—yellow, maybe, or red. It'll probably take a while for him to choose, and the Home Depot is no place for a toddler.

Once strapped into his grandfather's car, backpack full of his parrot and the dolls he got for his birthday in the seat beside him, Sam expresses his opinion of the day's plans with the most offensive phrase he knows: "Owan-go!"

"No Orange-Glo," says Stiles sternly. Derek laughs his way back inside.

While Stiles, trailing after him on the walkway, clomps up the stairs for a quick shower, Derek cleans the kitchen, relieved yet vaguely unnerved by the novel quiet. No one attempts to climb up his leg while he washes the dishes. No one breaks anything while he is scrubbing something that's dried onto the table. At no point does someone shout or spill or chase the cat. Eventually Derek tears the margin containing his shopping list off the newspaper and makes his way upstairs. 

There, Stiles, hair wet and curling, is in the process of selecting clothing to wear: he's in a t-shirt and his ratty khakis, standing in front of the closet, hand resting on the bar all the hangers are hooked on. But it looks like he's been distracted by the mirror. He glances, surprised, at Derek. "Oh," he says, jolting belatedly back into action, "hey. Uh, while we're out, we should finally get that, uh, shelving..." He blanks on the word. "...unit, for Sammy's room..."

"I have a list," Derek informs him, displaying his scrap of newsprint. 

"Well, aren't _you_ Miss Suzy-on-top-of-it," comments Stiles, digging into the back of the closet. "God, I'm back on big, stupid sweaters, aren't I," he adds, muttering to himself. 

"Aren't you gonna be too hot?" asks Derek. 

"Hot damn," answers Stiles in a deadpan. Derek can't repress the impulse to roll his eyes animatedly. "This isn't about my physical comfort," Stiles adds bitterly. "It's about my—my emotional, my peace of _mind_." 

Derek leans back against the dresser—the short one with the mirror on top, not the tall, handleless one from Ikea. Stiles is debating between two different sweaters, both of which are heavy and utterly nondescript. "Not sure I follow."

"Sure," says Stiles dully. "I feel," he considers his words. "Like a water balloon." 

"A _water balloon_." 

"Yeah. Y'know?" 

"Not really, no." 

Stiles tries to shape the concept in the air with his hands while he waits for the lingual descriptors to load. "Wobbly," he finally comes up with. "Bloated?" 

"Wet?" provides derek. 

"Yeah." Stiles is almost having fun insulting himself, and that Derek is playing along is a muted delight in his eyes. Then he returns to his reflection. "I just feel like everyone can tell." 

Ah. Derek looks at him, objective, and tries to look at the issue from Stiles' point of view. It's not obvious, he doesn't think. At most, he looks like he's put on a little weight—he gained weight twice as quickly this time as he did the last time, and that's an observation Derek's made even taking into account the fact that the pregnancy went undiagnosed for several months. But it's still not noticeable yet, a pinkish heft to him that you'd only see if you _watched_ him the way Derek does. Unless you've memorized the shape of him, unless you're staring. If Derek's honest with himself, he likes it. He's not sure if it's because he's into Stiles this way in _particular_ , or if he's just into Stiles in general, and this way is still relatively new. "Doubt it," is all he says. 

"You sure?" Stiles is flatly willing to accept this. He's got one hand resting on a bulky, grey thing with a question mark inexplicably knitted into the front of it.

Derek steps into his personal space, up behind him while he pushes the grey thing away and begins to examine a simple green zip-up hoodie. He doesn't notice immediately. When Derek just says, "Yeah," he shivers minutely. He tugs the jacket off the hanger, and then turns to address Derek.

"Anyway, I'm still trying to figure out what color would—" begins Stiles, but he stops. Derek's hungrily tracing the lines of Stiles' body with his eyes, and as oblivious and weak-sensed as humans are, Stiles seems to catch on to what's going on with Derek, because he says, laughing a little incredulously, "Are you serious right now? Are you really—what, does my insecurity turn you on or something?"

"Can't think of a hell of a lot you do that's _not_ turning me on," Derek admits. 

"Oh," says Stiles simply, weakly. He considers this for a moment, brows furrowed and ears gone pink. Derek puts his lips to Stiles' neck, not kissing it, really: just touching there and thinking about it. Slowly, distractedly, Stiles returns to his reflection and starts to shove his arms into the sleeves of the jacket. "Well, um, we don't—"

Derek's interrupting his process of donning the jacket before he really knows what he's doing, pulling Stiles against him, wrapping around him from behind. Stiles asks him again if he's serious, which he ignores: he's busy sliding his palms up under Stiles' t-shirt, which just says the word "fuck" in various sizes and fonts like a word cloud of swears. 

"Oh, jesus, you're really—" Stiles is arching helplessly back against Derek's hips. He catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror and shuts his eyes tight.

"You know what? I'm gonna make you stay home today," says Derek with firm decision. "I think I'm gonna..."

"You're gonna do me," Stiles contributes. He turns in Derek's arms to face him; and then he lets Derek press him back against the mirror with a thump. "Right? You wanna?" He swallows. "Maybe?" He peers into Derek's eyes, searching for confirmation that he hasn't somehow hilariously misinterpreted Derek's erection.

Derek gropes him, watches the shades of red ratchet vividly up in Stiles' face. "Not seeing how I can _avoid_ wanting that," mumbles Derek, more or less to himself; but Stiles grins.

He's perfect, Derek insists, to Stiles' mortified full-body flush, and Derek's palms itch to touch him, to cup and squeeze every convex shape on him, to put his mouth to his skin, where he's soft and hot and perspiring, needy. He's already rounding out, so it's easier for Stiles to get on his hands and knees to take Derek's fingers, to shove back against his hand until he's keening and desperate—" _Mount_ me," Stiles says roughly into the comforter, and then cackles when Derek shoves into him a little harder than necessary. " _Ummm_ , we still have to get paint later—"

"Shut up," Derek snaps. "Shut—"

He pushes in again, gets it right, and he and Stiles low together over the sound of the mattress creaking. "Yyyeah," Stiles says into a pillow. "Mm—let's, ah—let's do it again after we get paint, af—I wanna fuck you, I do—"

"You never wanna fuck me anymore," says Derek, who isn't entirely sure what he's saying anymore. He's just saying things. He thinks he's just complaining because it's been too long since he's ridden Stiles' dick, he's forgotten what being _speared_ feels like. This is tragic.

"I do, yes, I—I _want_ you—" Stiles forces himself to breathe. Turns his head to stare at Derek over his shoulder. Through grit teeth, he adds, "I wanna rim you until you forget how to speak English."

"To byłoby okropne," Derek replies, and with a flash of blue eyes, Stiles violently shudders his way into an unexpected, loud orgasm.

He collapses under Derek, goes into a melty, limp mess, and Derek takes this opportunity to touch him all over, the softness of his belly and the sharp angles of his forearms—and before he knows it, Derek's coming too, a slow one like he's slid into a hot bath that turns gravity around for a minute. He sinks through it onto the bed, weakly fighting the urge to fall asleep—because the shopping list, albeit tossed to the floor next to Stiles' abandoned hoodie, calls to him. He feels the bed move as Stiles turns over onto his back. After a pause, he takes Derek's hand and pulls it over to his belly, holds it there, and sighs. Eyes still shut, Derek says, still a little breathless, "You look good, honey. Stop... trying to cover up." There's subdued exasperation there, but it's idle and he knows it. He hopes Stiles does, too.

Stiles doesn't answer for a while, and eventually Derek pries his eyes open to make sure he's okay; what he finds is Stiles looking at him with some fond approximation of happiness in his face. He's tracing the bumps of Derek's knuckles absently. "Green," he says. his eyes are darting back and forth between both of Derek's. 

Derek blinks as slowly as he can, because the rest of his body is still a buzzing, useless, sticky mass, but he needs to indicate his confusion. Stiles bites his lip behind another wave of delight and then addresses the ceiling.

"We should paint the nursery green."

::

Derek stands at the front window in a daze. He stares at the patchy heaps of snow with some mild note of perplexion. The house seems to ring with silence after an entire morning of showing Sam snow. He _screamed_ at it, stumbled through it in his puffy little snowsuit, lost a doll in it, ate it, filled his pockets with it, brought it in the house, rubbed it into the cat's fur, " _Warm_ key cat, cool _down_ key cat," and _wailed_ when Derek ultimately brought him inside. Naptime is a horrific and unnecessary injustice, unwelcome in Samuel's plans for the day: which is why he passed out after fifty seconds in his bed.

Now it is quiet, and still, snow thinning out, but continuing to fall. Derek gets a bone-deep shiver when it abruptly registers that this is the same front window he watched snow through when he was Sam's age. He has a _kid_ now, a family. If he listens, strains his ears, maybe he can still hear his mother, "Coral Angeline Hale, _pick_ your coat up off the floor."

And their brother, "Yeah, what the hell, Cora? Were you raised by _wolves_?"

"This state, dude," Stiles quips from behind, making Derek jump. "It, like, _never_ snows here, and when it does, it's enough to build things in. Last time we had this much snow, I was in the fourth grade. I made this, like, snow cave with Scott?" Derek turns, looks at him peacefully. He's wearing a sweater, but this time it's a soft one, sleeves pushed up around his elbows."It collapsed, and Scott dug me out, and we hugged and talked about how fuckin' rad it was for like, fifteen minutes. We found my Boba Fett figurine when the rain washed the snow out."

"I remember that storm," Derek says softly. Looks back out the window. "My sister and I built a woman in a bikini." He moves his hands to indicate a curvy woman. At Stiles' raised eyebrow, he protests, "I was fif _teen_."

"We should build her again," Stiles says, slinking up behind him.

"She mostly looked like a hutt," Derek dismisses. Stiles sighs happily. "The next winter," Derek adds, and then changes his mind. Sighs at the window. Stiles doesn't push him. Just slides his arms around him, puts his chin on Derek's shoulder.

It's started to rain, and the snow is turning into sudsy puddles in the lawn.

::

Monica's baby comes two weeks before the estimated delivery date, but considering no one knew the exact time of conception, no one is surprised. Derek, Cora, Monica's sister, and Erica are in the waiting room in various states of nerves when Boyd approaches them with an unwavering, painful-looking smile.

"Everything is fine," he tells them first.

"Is it a boy or a girl?" asks Erica, hands uncharacteristically laced over her heart.

"Can I see her?" asks Monica's sister.

Derek looks at Cora, and can tell that for all her tension, she's bursting with happiness for Boyd.

"You can come in one at a time," says Boyd, "Denise first." Monica's sister hauls her purse up on her shoulder. Boyd says, incandescent, "Come meet Vernon Boyd the fifth."

::

Vernon is just as raisinlike as Sammy was. He's wrapped in a pink blanket with bears on it. Sam examines him, when Monica brings him to the Hale-Stilinski house for her belated baby shower—theirs is the only _house_ , among all the people they know. Monica places the baby gingerly into her sister's arms, and Denise tips him up so Scott and Samuel can see him. "Beer," Sam identifies the bears on the blanket.

"Bears," confirms Scott, behind him.

"Beers."

"This is _Vernon_ ," Monica tells Sam, voice hushed, as if presenting him with a priceless gem. And she might be. Who is Derek to say she _isn't_? Verny smells like new life, strong and full of potential, under the thin layer of baby wipes and spit-up. Derek feels elated just having him in the house, euphoric, like when he was a teenager and he'd have a huge meal in the midst of a growth spurt. Vernon is a sudden growth. "Can you say Vernon?"

"Bird," Sam tries, his tiny Hale brows knit in concentration. He looks up at Scott for help.

Scott doesn't notice. He's smoothing a hand over baby Vernon's tiny head, beaming. "He's so _pretty_ ," he tells Monica, who smirks, proud.

It's true. He's less _froglike_ than Sam was at his age, longer-limbed, with big, soulful eyes. He has velvetty skin, and a penchant for getting the hiccups.

Everyone spends the afternoon marveling over the pack's latest additions, praising Vernon for experiencing hunger and using his eyes, and Sam stands stock-still, watching him suspiciously. There is something curious between them, something intense that only Derek seems to be paying attention to. Sam stares, and Verny stares back. Verny drools, makes slimy bubbles with his mouth, and Sam sucks his thumb. Sam picks his nose, and Verny sneezes.

It's poetic.

That night, after everyone's gone home, Sam fits himself onto Stiles' shrinking lap before bed, and tells him everything, as if Stiles hadn't been there. "Baby Nerve, banket," he's saying, "stars," and Stiles is rocking him slowly in Melissa's wooden rocker, nodding seriously. "Daddy. Lay down."

Derek thinks he might just be saying phrases he knows, but far be it from him to discourage it. When you only know twenty words, it's a little difficult to express your thoughts. Stiles has theorized that Sam just changes the meaning of words in his head sometimes. Sam's little sleepy voice chugs slower and slower the longer Stiles rocks him quietly, until he mutters himself into a deep Stilinski slumber.

Stiles kisses the downy hair at his temple, mumbles "Night, wolfchops" against his skin, and tucks him under a blanket with his parrot.

::

Isaac's friend Chase from college is in town for a week at the beginning of Stiles' third trimester, and Stiles is miserable about it. "I _hate_ that guy," Stiles says vehemently to Derek, clumsily navigating a pillow into its case. Derek put off doing laundry for a while, so Stiles is out of shirts that fit over his belly. He's wearing one of Derek's three dress shirts. The buttons are gapping a little. "You know, he used to hit on me, like, _all the time_."

Derek squints. "Really?"

" _Yes, really_ ," snaps Stiles. The cat growls and hisses out in the hall, and Sam giggles musically. "Samuel Marco, you stop harassing the cat," Stiles bellows. Little bare feet slap on the hardwood as Sam hurries giddily away.

"I'm just saying he didn't even seem to recognize you," says Derek with a shrug.

"That's exactly _it_!" Stiles whips the finally clothed pillow at Derek. Derek snatches it out of the air, gives him a Look. "Don't look at me like that, he made my entire college career a reality TV show called Avoiding Sexual Advances From Bad Poets Who Smell Like Feet, but literally like a year and a half later, he's looking at me like we're total strangers."

"Well," shrugs Derek. "You look a little different, probably."

"Dark circles and a baby bump don't make a person fuckin' incognito," Stiles replies, and then freezes, puts a hand over his mouth. Wide eyes darting towards the hallway, he whispers, "D'you think he heard that?"

"Uh, definitely." Stiles sneers at him. Derek is unimpressed. Luckily, he probably won't repeat it. He doesn't like hard K sounds. "Maybe you should just be grateful he doesn't hit on you anymore."

"Maybe _you_ should suck my _dick_." Realizing what he said, Stiles stamps his foot and smacks a hand against his forehead.

::

Stiles tells Derek Second Kid's name while he's on his knees in front of Sam, who is sitting on a plastic toilet and looking furiously confounded, brown eyes wide and wispy brows bunched. It's the first time Derek's ever agreed that he looks like Derek; the expression is pure Hale Constipation—a phrase Stiles coined. Sam stands, Frozen pull-up around his ankles, and Stiles patiently sits him back down.

"Why?" Derek asks Stiles.

" _Why_ ," repeats Sam. It almost seems like a legitimate query. He kicks his feet.

"Because," Stiles says drily. "I need to genetically pass on my misery." Derek gives him a look, which he returns. Sam stands, and Stiles sits him back down without looking at him. "Besides," he goes on, "it means 'to build,' 'to create.'" Sam stands one more time, with a frustrated whine, and this time Stiles rolls his eyes, pulls his pants back up. "Isn't that what we're doing here?" he asks Derek.

Derek watches him thoughtfully for a moment.

Sammy points at Stiles' middle, says firmly, "Baby."

"Yup," Stiles confirms happily. It's an interchange they have roughly once a day. Stiles thinks it was seeing Monica carry and then produce a baby that clued Sam in; and he's taken this to be a sign that he understands the miracle of childbirth, that he anticipates his new sibling with relish. Derek's pretty sure he's just repeating a word he's heard at least once a day for the last three months. Satisfied, Sam leaves the bathroom. Stiles takes Derek's offered hand, lets himself be stood like a puppet on strings. Once standing, he takes Derek's hand and presses it to his stomach. "Tomorrow," Stiles tells Derek solemnly, gesturing to the kid toddling down the hall, heels thumping on the rug, "there's gonna be two of that guy." He holds Derek's gaze for a minute or so. He still hasn't let go of Derek's hand. "Are we ready?"

After some consideration, Derek shakes his head no, and says, "Yes."

::

In the morning, they drop Sam off at Scott's.

"You gonna be a good wolf for Scotty?" Stiles asks him. He replies by spluttering into a phlegmy cough, sniffling. Stiles grimaces, scrubs at his cheek with a sleeve. "I'll take that as a yes, for my own peace of mind."

"Baby," Sam customarily announces, indicating the stretched front of Stiles' sweater. 

" _Yeah_. I'm gonna go to the doctor. You ready to be a big brother?" Sam walks away, leaving Stiles on the floor in Scott and Isaac's foyer. "Well, it was a nice moment while it lasted," Stiles grunts at Derek, reaching up for support to get back up on his feet.

Derek takes his hand and hauls him up. "Stop getting on the floor while you're incapable of regular movement," he grumps.

"Aw, who's cranky?"

"Shove it, Stiles." Stiles snickers.

"Poppy." They both pause, look down at the floor. Sam is holding the blue blanket that doesn't suck in a rumpled bundle in his hands. It's still large enough to cover him completely if it were dropped over his head. "Poppy, _banket_ —" He tries to hand it to Stiles, but Stiles doesn't react quickly enough, and it falls to the floor. Sam retrieves it and grinds it into Stiles' limp hand. 

"Is this for me now?" Stiles asks blankly, finally accepting it.

" _No_ ," snaps Sam. " _Baby_ banket."

"It's for the baby?" Derek translates.

Sam ignores them and starts to toddle away, but Stiles gets back on the floor again—oh, for god's sake—to hug Sammy ("You're so sweet, c'mere, sugar, I love you more than the moon and hot dogs") and kiss his face repeatedly until he yells and starts to push at him. Derek stands awkwardly near them, eyes glazing over. In a couple of hours, he's gonna be a father of two. Two is too many, he suddenly decides. One is fine, one Derek can handle. Two is double the amount he's used to.

Samuel starts to bark happily as he leaves the room once more. Derek can't think about this right now. He can't—he thinks about arugula. Thinks about a salad, and how refreshing it would be to eat one right now. One with a nice, simple Italian dressing, cherry tomatoes around the edges of the plate—he recalls that there's a Panera up the road from Deaton's clinic.

"Derek?" Stiles is back on his feet. Derek wonders wildly how he got that way, and vaguely recalls Stiles grabbing his belt loops and using him as scaffolding. "Dude? Um..." Derek lets his eyes dart down to where Stiles' hands are, right clutching the blanket and left resting on top of his stomach, hideous, gigantic sweater bunched above and below it. His wedding ring glints dully under the tacky overhead light in the foyer. "You, um. You cool?"

He's staring with concern into Derek's eyes. He's also flushed and depleted from standing up twice in the span of five minutes. With a deep breath, Derek shakily makes up his mind he's back in the game. Anything, he once decided, _anything_ for Stiles. Anything in this _world_. Granted, he made that decision _before_ he knew this world contained magical confusion-babies, but hell. _Sam_ turned out all right. He barks sometimes, but don't we all have our flaws? Sammy is wonderful. He's wonderful because he's Derek's, and Derek has him with Stiles. He's also wonderful because he brings Derek the paper. 

"Yeah," Derek says suddenly, reaching for Stiles' free hand. "I'm cool."

"Well, _that's_ debatable," Stiles says shittily as he's led out the door to the car.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well so _that_ happened i hope y'all made it out ok


	16. a filler chapter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don't get excited. It's just Stiles' pov for a minute.

Stiles doesn't really know what to expect from a magical pregnancy. As in, what the _average_ magical pregnancy entails. How they're different from a normal pregnancy. What he should let people in on gently, what might be a little weird, unexpected. All he knows is what he's experiencing.

Derek gets Stiles off in the shower with his fingers, with his mouth. Very quickly before work, Sam in the living room with Scott. Nothing substantial, if anything Derek does to Stiles with his fingers and his mouth could be labeled insubstantial. Couple nights later, Stiles has the first of a series of weird fucking dreams. For, like, two weeks, every night, nucking futs.

He dreams he's blind, running headlong through a forest that smells like Yosemite on drugs. He dreams he's trying to bake bread, but there's too much yeast and the dough is filling up the room. He dreams about the night Scott was bitten, vividly, like he was there, stunted, like he was distracted. He dreams of his mother, arms wrapped around his shoulders, pressing her lips to his temple. She smells like violets; Sam calls her "Gamma."

He's holding a balloon, and when he looks up, the balloon is a gigantic, uncooked turkey leg.

He's driving a car with no brakes.

He's in a pool of pink water.

He's wearing a hat.

 _A huge hat_.

The weirdest one is the one where Derek is trapped somewhere in his old high school, and Stiles is trying to sneak in through the locker rooms by passing himself as a woman. It works; Coach hits on him. Stiles wakes up from this dream with goosebumps, turns over and squirms his way into Derek's personal space, and that's when the _desires_ start.

You don't get how _good_ Derek looks. And he _smells_ good, god, he smells like woodsmoke and almond oil and—and raisins. Derek _hates_ _raisins_. He only comes in contact with them to feed them to Sam as payment for doing unpleasant things, like wearing shoes and taking baths and going to the grocery store. Sitting in his car seat. He touches them for about thirty cumulative seconds a day, but Stiles can _smell_ it on him like a _perfume_ , and it isn't that raisins are inherently sexy. It's being able to identify what Derek's been doing, where he puts his hands, where he sits—being able to look at him and guess the way he looks when he's doling them out like Halloween candy.

Stiles wants to just put his _hands_ on him.

Own him, eat him up, eat him out for _days_. One day at work Stiles is daydreaming at the cash register, trying to make a pencil backflip by hitting the point, when Scott texts him a picture of Derek scowling vehemently over the tops of his readers—Stiles has to take a ten minute break and masturbate furiously in the bathroom.

He starts wanting to stay home from work. All the time—not just to fuck Derek inside-out, but to paint rooms and nap and hug Sam until he whines and squirms away. And _also_ to fuck Derek inside-out, in addition _to_. He wants to sit on his dick and milk him dry, to get him naked and lay in his lap just to touch his foreskin while he reads. He takes a sick day and they spend Sammy's naptime in bed together, half dressed and lazily feeling each other up, slow and steamy like some kind of oneiric orgy, like they don't have anything to do later, like they don't have to be done in an hour or else their kid won't sleep that night.

Stiles can't emphasize enough how much he's needed it.

It's like an addiction. He needed his fix of Derek's palms sliding dreamily down his ribs. Necking like they're in a 80's rock ballad video. Stiles can't get enough of Derek touching him. Waves of warm comfort and tight safety rippling through him. Maybe he was just craving the intimacy. Not a quick, frantic fuck, talking dirty and clawing, but _bathing_ in each other, getting off like it's an afterthought. That's how Derek likes it best, and Stiles has his preferences, but sometimes you're in the mood for caramel ice cream, not your usual chocolate with nuts and gummy worms. Stiles just wants to _worship_ Derek Hale a little, sometimes.

He wonders if other couples do that. Siri, remind him to ask Scott if the amount of concentration he gives to tracing every dip and slope on Derek's body is _excessive_. ("OK, I'll remind you to 'Ask Scott if the amount of concentration a gift decreasing every Diffin slope on derricks body is excessive.' When would you like to be reminded?") Scott will be honest, and Stiles appreciates that. Stiles has no tact. He ironically prefers to label himself _tactfully challenged_. Scott is different. He _has_ tact, but he puts it on the _shelf_ for Stiles. He can go blunt statement for blunt statement with Stiles like it's a sparring match. It's a skill he honed to absolute perfection sometime in their junior year of high school.

So Stiles will ask Scott what he would call Stiles burning three grilled cheeses because he started mournfully imagining waking up slowly to Derek kissing his neck, like he used to do, before their little four am wakeup call was born. Three times. But Stiles wouldn't call it an _obsession_ , or anything.

Yes, he would. He would in fact blindly label it an obsession. If he was a third party observer, "obsession" would be the exact phrasing he would use.

It _is_ weird, probably. Derek doesn't seem put off by it, just—pleasantly surprised. Maybe a little worried, even; Stiles thinks he's capable of smelling insecurities on Stiles. Derek lets Stiles have his fill of breathing his air. Stiles hasn't felt like this since just before Derek texted Stiles, "Deaton wants to talk you," and Stiles showed up there chuckling about Derek's missing 'to' and left blinking back tears of amazement.

It dawns on him not too long after the supremely well-used naptime, as he's reacquainting himself with the toilet bowl. "You're fucking _kidding_ me," he accuses the flushing shitter, which has no response but to smell like bleach and stagnant water. A delightful aroma that Stiles now associates with _motherfucking morning sickness_.

Because it isn't something you expect to happen in the first place. Have you ever just sat down and thought about how fucking _insane_ it is? Stiles had a goddamn _baby_. "Hey, wow, Greenberg, you've changed in the last couple years. What've you been up to?" "Oh, divorced my wife, working. You?" "I just got done losing the weight I gained from conceiving and giving birth to a living child." That—now, _that_ shit is _hilarious_. Think about it. Have a seat. Take a minute.

Stiles Stilinski, mother of the year. (Stiles laughs a lot. It's how he _copes_ so well.) Even while he was getting fat and eating mayo with a spoon, he still wasn't expecting this to come to fruition until he was half awake and being handed a baby. "It's a boy," the vet tells him. It was like being told Mickey _Mouse_ was a boy. Like, wow, great. Thanks.

Now he has a miniature person with moony eyes and ticklish feet. There you go. It happened. Sometimes people get in the way of a lightning bolt. Hooray. They get a burn and an article in the paper, Stiles gets his little wolfling, everybody ends up okay. (Except for the people that die. That sucks.)

But, see, a one-in-a-million event is one thing, it's difficult to plan for that. You _can_ not plan for it twice.

You cannot fucking—who gets struck by lightning _twice_? Who gets struck by lightning, and then, like, _I_ dunno, a _year_ later, has it happen _again_? Stiles should google that. But _this_ isn't lightning, this—this, this! This. _This_ was supposed to be a _fluke_.

Stiles wishes he spoke Polish, so he could be swearing in it right now.

He tries running it by Derek a couple times. Testing the waters. He tries to talk _theories_. How this _happened_ , how to _regulate_ it. (I mean, _what_ 're they, _Mormon_? They're not gonna just have twelve children because they never bothered with contraceptive methods, and they're _absolutely_ not gonna just stop having sex. That's not how this is gonna go down.) Derek seems unconcerned at best. It doesn't seem to really occur to him that this could happen again. Stiles can relate.

Then Stiles starts mixing up how far along _he_ probably is with how far along _Monica_ probably is, and Derek starts talking about how great it is that nobody's pregnant anymore, and Stiles is. Just.

He takes Sammy in to Deaton's for a checkup. Deposits him in a pen of other puppies and then addresses the doc urgently. Because, "Remember that one time you cut me open and found a tiny person? That was crazy. What if it happened again?"


	17. derek and stiles make another baby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We made this, I can't communicate with my toddler, I made a tentative friend, and more.

Zdzisława Darcy Hale(-Stilinski), a truncation of her absurd name, is content to suck on Derek's finger until it dissolves into a nub, and Derek is powerless to stop her—as if he would ever want to. He is completely and utterly at her mercy, her forever loyal liege.

She's round-bellied, red-faced, with a thick shock of black hair and a sticky patch on her left leg. Her eyes are wide and cloudy, when she deigns to open them. She's so much like Sam and Verny, and yet so different. Derek is amazed that all newborn babies can be so similar and so… not.

She's a comforting weight in his arms, still and fragile, grunting plaintively whenever she deems his support of her neck lacking. Something about her is distinctly like the women of his family, and in a moment of world-reeling amazement, he can feel them all standing with him. Four generations of Hale women. His sisters and his mother and his great aunt, and his daughter.

When he was younger Derek used to wonder why he'd been born, since his mere existence seemed to wreak havoc everywhere he went. He briefly thought it was to teach, and later, to follow. Maybe to love. It's clear now, though. Obvious, even, now that he's watching her try to tuck her face against his chest. He was born for this. Every drop of spilled blood, every ounce of pain, every sleepless hour's led to this moment. He was born for _her_.

::

Deaton is listening to Stiles' chest through a stethoscope when Sam wanders into the room and lights up like his engine got a jump. " _Papa_ ," he exclaims joyously.

" _Hey_ , how's my little latke?" Stiles yells, and Deaton winces dramatically, yanks the stethoscope out of his ears. Stiles barely notices; he holds out his arms and lets Sam fire himself at him. Sammy then busies himself taking inventory of Stiles, who allows this. "Still got my ears," he says when Sam tweaks one thoughtfully. "That's my hand. Look, ten fingers." He counts patiently. Sam watches each of Stiles' fingers twitch in turn. Then he resumes his inspection.

"Baby?" he eventually asks.

"She got born," Stiles explains in the same voice with which he announced Santa's arrival Sam's first perplexing Christmas. Like that in that scenario, the information Sam has just received does not compute. He reaches for Stiles' belly. "Gentle," Stiles warns, taking Sam's hand before it makes contact. "I got a scar there. The baby is a dragon, and she clawed her way out—"

"No," Derek asserts, firm but softspoken, so as not to wake the unfortunately somewhat dragonlike Zdzisława in his arms.

None of this makes any sense to Sam. He looks like a freshman who's just been cornered by seniors demanding that he do their calculus homework. He doggedly tries a new topic, one he's in charge of: "Stars…"

Derek disallows the subject change. "This is Zdzisława," he tells Sam, leaning close and presenting him with the baby. She stirs, makes bubbles of spit form on her lips. "Can you say that? Zdzi _sła_ wa." _Derek_ can barely say it. And he'd consider himself proficient in Polish. He glances doubtfully at Stiles.

"Sheesh," Sam says, looking like he's not sure how to get those sounds to come out of his mouth. Or why he'd even want to. "Gee—Stars."

"Your baby sister," offers Stiles softly, like it's a family secret, passed down from generation to generation, and Sam is its next treasured recipient. With this new tone of voice, Sam takes Zdzisława in again.

He reaches tentatively and takes hold of her left foot, which has a pink sock on it. Derek thinks he must squeeze too hard, because she whines and reflexively advances her claws, tearing through the soft cotton; this in turn startles Sam into a fresh batch of angry tears. This inspires the baby to one-up him in terms of sheer volume.

Stiles looks shocked, at a loss, even—Derek, however, is right at home. He finds himself grinning from ear to ear in the face of a room full of misery, thinking wistfully of his own sisters. 

**come in** , he texts Cora, and presently the door pushes open. 

::

Scott comes in handy over the next few weeks. What he lacks in baby know-how he makes up for in complete emotional investment. Stiles can't move? Scott is there. Derek needs a shower, but the baby won't stop crying? Call Scott. Sam is destructively bored? Thank god for Scott. He becomes as much a fixture of the house as Stiles or Derek, starts sleeping in the half-unfinished guest room so often it smells like him when he's not there. On eventless, calm afternoons, Sam wanders quietly in there and touches the bedspread and says his name.

It's Scott who first starts calling Zdzisława by her middle name, "Darcy," a thing that Stiles excitedly latches onto, "Darcy Bell," and that almost overnight becomes canon packwide, "Darce." Sam still has issues saying her name, "Dartz," but this way he can just end up with a misappropriation of it, a _close but no cigar_ version of it, as opposed to with Zdzisława, where he just ends up with a _not even a little bit_ version ("Shiz, d'ziss, snip _sov_ um"). All of this seems to go over her head.

It is also Scott who eagerly volunteers to help transition Sam from crib to newly-purchased toddler bed, something he probably regrets vehemently. Derek knew it would be a sisyphean task, so there's really no excuse for sweetly replying, "Of course, Scott. You take the lead on this one."

Derek doesn't think he deserves too terribly much criticism, though. Scott _is_ the true alpha.

"No!" Sam bellows.

He has his fists on his hips, feet spread apart and planted firmly on the ground.

" _Wow_!" enthuses Scott from the small bed.

"No!"

"What a cool _bed_ this is! I sure—"

" _No_!"

"—wish _I_ could have a bed li—"

" _NO_!" Sam screeches. Kicks his feet, does a flailing motion that looks suspiciously like the running man. Once the rug is flung aside, his Frog Princess footy pajamas slip around on the hardwood floors. The screech ends.

"But you _love_ your bed," reasons Allison. "Remember? It's for a _big_ kid."

" _Big_ kim," repeats Sam tearfully. He lifts a consternated finger and says something that sounds an awful lot like _Nostradamus_. Derek spends all day, every day with this child and half of the things that come out of his mouth are a complete mystery.

"C'mon, dude," says Scott. "It's nighty-night, bro!"

He appreciates Scott and Allison's sentiments, but he also doesn't quite understand their drive to reason with a toddler. "Okay, Sam," he says irritably, because it's nine at night and he's tired of the screaming. "Get in the bed."

Sam takes in a deep breath, something Derek recognizes. Scott and Allison watch him blankly while he throws himself across the room to clap a hand over Sam's mouth. The supernatural howl is mashed flat against Derek's palm. Sam kicks both feet up and falls on his behind on the floor, which elicits a predictable response. "I'm done," Allison says, hands up. "I'm sorry, I just—this is why I'm never procreating." She leaves. Derek sympathizes.

Scott looks lost. Derek feels lost. Sam's been inconsolable since his sister came home. It's been two weeks and Stiles is just now recovering. "We should maybe take a break on the whole…" Stiles said groggily to Derek his first night back home, and then puffed out his cheeks, used his hands to indicate fatness. Derek felt an eye twitch. "Just for a while."

That was Derek's _plan_. It was his plan the _first_ time. The while would have lasted eighteen years, until Sam could reach into the refrigerator and dress himself. It could very well have lasted until he and Stiles were both dead of exhaustion, or "hashtag werewolf problems," which is how Stiles occasionally refers to their lives in general following the night Scott was bitten.

The fact that Stiles said this as if it was a new concept was a red flag. It was several red flags. It was a red amusement park. They had to have a Discussion about it, the first legitimate argument they've had since before Sam was born. It will never cease to amaze Derek that Stiles could experience all the physical setbacks of biologically impossible pregnancy, live with two infants with superpowers and a surly, beclawed spouse, survive postpartum depression, and have to clean _actual blood fingerpainting_ off the walls, and _still_ not rule out a third kid. Likewise, Stiles is perplexed that Derek can look at their kids falling asleep together on a quilt in the back yard, read to them and give them a bath, see the way they look at the sheriff, watch them throw things at each other, and not want more.

It is a fundamental disagreement that is forcing a wedge between the lobes of Derek's brain. His patience is dwindling; his sanity is fraying.

Sam's eyes are flashing gold and he's just drawn blood from his own face, and Derek is about to snap and throw himself through the plate glass window when Scott begins to sing.

It's soft, almost uncertain, and in Spanish.

Sam devolves from violent screaming to quiet weeping. Derek feels his insides unknot a little bit.

Sam has a nightlight in his room, a crescent moon. Inside it, something rotates, which casts pleasant star shapes around the room, always moving. Derek and Sam end up squeezed onto the tiny bed with Scott, his legs across Derek's lap, Sam cuddled against his side, and Derek watches these drowsily and listens. Scott's not a singer, but there's an earnestness in his voice and his pronunciation that gives it a sort of unspoken power that Derek can't quite put his finger on. When the room is still and quiet, Scott lets his song end. If Derek strained his ears, he could listen to what Stiles is saying to Malia on the phone downstairs, could maybe check in on the baby, but he takes a moment for mental health instead. He lets Scott's heartbeat fill his head.

Derek's almost dozing off when Scott says, "Angie dumped me."

Derek blinks, processes the words for a second. Sam is fast asleep, nose pink, Scott's fingers tangled tenderly in his curls. "How come?"

"She said I never have time for her," says Scott. "She said I was _weirdly invested in my gay friends' baby_." He gives this phrase oddly-placed finger quotes with one hand.

"Did you tell her we're not gay?" Derek rumbles.

Scott laughs once, short but genuine. The nightlight makes a quiet whirring sound as it turns, provides something of white noise that seems to help Sam sleep. "You know," Scott adds thoughtfully, "for a little bit there I actually thought she could be the one."

Derek looks at him, looks at his kid sleeping in the arms of his favorite alpha. Feels the full brunt of this sting. It's the least he could do. "I'm sorry," he says.

Scott shakes his head. "Nah. Don't be." His hand slides down to Sam's back, rubs there in soft circles. "You guys are as much my family as my wife would be, you know? That's _pack_. If she's not okay with you guys, she's not okay with me. And it's better I find that out sooner than later."

Derek represses the urge to bury his face in Scott's knees.

"It's like that song," Scott goes on. "If u wanna be my lover—"

" _Stop_ ," begs Derek, and Scott starts giggling uncontrollably.

::

"She's seventeen," Stiles is telling Scott throatily. Scott reassuringly adjusts the blankets covering Stiles on the couch. "She's pregnant, homeless." He makes a weird snuffling noise. "And she's living in a _Walmart_!"

"I know, man," concurs Scott. It's an appropriately vague response, because with Stiles on pain meds and not a little hormonal, it's hard to tell whether he's sad or happy sometimes. Derek says nothing from the kitchen, where he's watching the baby greedily suck down the contents of a bottle. Her claws are out. She's spent her entire earthly life at least half shifted. It makes dressing her somewhat complicated.

Stiles whaps the kleenex box against the coffee table. "She just wants to take care of her tree!"

"Not really anyplace to plant it at a Walmart," Scott agrees, shaking his head, as if the movie character's situation is more than a Lifetime plot, as if it's some kind of cosmic commentary on society at large. It's not just her living in the Walmart: it's everyone. It's all of us. We all live in the Walmart, and each of our trees suffers from leaf rot and nitrogen deficiency.

" _Shut_ up, James Frain," Stiles yells at the TV. "You don't even have a _beard_!"

Sam says exhilaratedly, "Oh!" and Derek notes that he's standing by the potted fern thoughtfully gifted to them by Malia's dad in response to the birth announcement. Sam has a fistful of potting soil in his hand, and it's moving perilously towards his open mouth. Derek speedwalks to him and drags him away with one foot. Sam's entire world is shattered; he wails.

::

Derek and Stiles have decided that a schedule really helps their whole family. Not just the baby, who wakes up thirty seconds before Derek does, like clockwork; not just Sammy, who gets anxious and miserable if he goes to bed half an hour late; not even the cat, who shits twice a day in the exact same spot six inches away from the litterbox. It's helpful to Stiles to have Friday nights: "guaranteed get some night" to Stiles; "date night" to normal people. And it's helpful to Derek to have Sunday afternoons.

This week he called Kira, asked to hang out. She said she'd be at the mall with Lydia, that he should meet them there; but when he finds Lydia, she's alone. "She had to go," she tells Derek. "Family emergency."

"Oh."

They stand in silence. Derek seriously considers just driving back home, calling the fifteen minutes he spent parking a loss. Then Lydia looks sharply at him and says, "I need a new cocktail dress. Come with me?"

On a lark, Derek says, "Fine." Whatever.

Forty minutes later, Lydia is in the dressing room with a veritable mountain of dresses, and Derek is sitting on the bench by the door. Occasionally an employee comes by to lead someone to a dressing room, and squints suspiciously at him.

"I was fourteen," Lydia's saying to him through the door, "but I told him I was sixteen. You?"

"Fifteen," Derek replies. "Who was yours."

"Guy at camp." Lydia pauses, sighs with frustration over what sounds like a snagged zipper. "He was a junior counselor." She gives up; Derek hears fabric hitting the floor unceremoniously. "I pretended to twist my ankle so he'd have to carry me to the infirmary."

She waits. He rolls his eyes. "Mine doesn't matter."

There is another pause. "Mmm, no," she says keenly, "I think—I think it might matter a little bit."

"You'd be wrong."

"No, I—"

"Doesn't matter."

"I have a feeling—"

"Feelings aren't reliable."

"The voices from the beyond are telling me I wanna hear this."

Derek sighs. She tosses a dress over the top of the door. "My sister's best friend," he finally admits.

Lydia gasps. " _Scandalous_! Isn't Cora, like, _my_ age? That would make her—"

"No, no," Derek huffs. "Not Cora, Laura. _Laura's_ best friend. Laura's a year older than I am." He pauses. "Was, she was a year older."

Lydia considers this. Then she says, "Is."

Derek laces his fingers and looks at the way they fit together.

"So, still scandalous! An older woman." Lydia steps out of the dressing room with a single, short, satin dress on a hanger. Not a single hair out of place. The heap of dresses Derek had to help carry are in a disheveled mountain on the floor behind her. "The circumstances, please."

Derek rolls his eyes again in a way that feels like they will never unroll. They'll just be pointing at the top back of his skull forever. But she smiles at him cockily, starts to sashay toward the belt section, and he tells her anyway.

::

One day Stiles comes home from work and Derek is on the kitchen floor. Beside him is Darcy, who is sniveling, and wrapped up so tight in the blue blanket she looks like a tiny burrito. Derek knows this. He also knows Stiles will comment on it.

"She looks like a corn cob," Stiles says blandly, and Derek stares at him. Stiles gets on the floor to kiss Darcy's face, and then remarks, " _Tears_. She's a _sad_ corn cob."

"She wouldn't stop crying," Derek tells him.

"So you mummified her?" Sam runs screaming into the kitchen, clambers onto Stiles' back. " _Hey_ , sugar, how's it hangin'?"

"She was quiet in the bath," Derek goes on, ignoring everyone. "She likes the bath."

"Qui in baff," repeats Sam.

"Well, that makes two of you," Stiles tells Darcy, scooping her up, burrito and all. He says something else, and then it takes Derek a minute to realize he's staring at him expectantly. He thinks over what Stiles just said, but there's nothing but garbled noise in his memory.

"What."

"A _nap_ ," Stiles repeats slowly. "A brief _sleep_. Go _take_ one." He goes about unraveling Darcy, whose fists spring forth to wave in the air. Stiles finds this delightful. Sam drops onto the floor and runs screaming into the back yard. Stiles stands and yells, "Samuel, _get_ back in here, you're in your _socks_."

"I have to start dinner," Derek says, more to himself than to Stiles. He gets up slowly. His back hurts.

"There are these people who will cook you dinner if you pay them to," Stiles announces. Darcy begins to fuss again, so he lifts her into the air. Puts his face against her stomach. It accomplishes nothing. "They'll even drive it to your house," Stiles goes on, muffled.

Derek hesitates. "I bought chicken."

"And we can eat that another time. Don't make me prick your finger on a spinning wheel. Get the hell out." He snatches up a spatula and swats at Derek until he goes upstairs. On his way up he hears Sam whine that he's hungry. Stiles replies, "All right, let's head to the broccoli store!" much to Sam's dismay.

::

"Look at her tummy," Stiles says to Sam.

The cat stretches her arms above her head, rolls on her back so Sam can rub her belly with both tiny hands.

It's swelteringly, unseasonably hot. The air conditioner roars dutifully, but Sam seems to have little to no sense of heat. He insists on spending this and many previous weekends out back, listening to Stiles narrate their surroundings, putting strange flora in his clothing for Derek to find later in the laundry. And Stiles doesn't tolerate lots of outdoors time particularly well; he either goes lobster pink or unattractively orange with plenty of sun, so he makes sure to coat himself with liberal amounts of sunscreen while he crouches with Sam on the cement slab that is the back porch.

Derek, however, will not be persuaded to leave the cool shade of the kitchen. There, he can sit with his equally sensible maggot and enjoy the comforts of modern living, with the door open for a nice breeze.

"See it? How soft it is?"

"Looka tum," Sam agrees, sounding a little bit like a game show announcer. "Woll a kitty, go—"

The cat yawns, and rumbles happily.

"Seein' her tummy," Stiles goes on. "Seein' her go. Boop, boop." Gibberish is shockingly out of character for Stiles; Derek takes it as a sign of boredom, or dehydration. Whatever else humans suffer from. He tucks the baby into the crook of one arm and goes about pouring a glass of iced tea.

"I like it when cats tummy, don't you?" Stiles says to Sam. "It's much cuter than when people tummy. Maybe it's the fur. Maybe it's the purr. I'm not really sure." Derek steps out the back door, surprises him with a frosty glass of tea. " _Thank_ you, sir!"

"Stop it," says Derek.

Stiles goes about downing the glass in one go, head tilted back. Derek resolutely does not watch his throat work, does not notice the droplet of perspiration roll from his jaw into the hollow of his collarbone. He's in a thin white t-shirt and khaki cargo shorts, barefoot. Not that Derek notices what he looks like. _What_ muscles? _What_ cute knees?

In Derek's arms, Darcy makes an impassioned noise, a plea to return to the air conditioned house.

Setting down the empty glass, Stiles says roughly to her, "I _concur_." 

::

Sam likes to toddle out of Derek's sight occasionally, likes to test his boundaries in the evening. So when Derek is quietly changing Darcy, putting her into her pajamas, Sam goes into the hall, and Derek listens attentively. He hears his bare feet slap on the hardwood down the hall, hears him thankfully avoid the stairs—which Derek appreciates, because he's cleaning things no one should ever have to come into contact with, and he really doesn't want to carry a filthy, squalling, naked infant into the hall to stop a toddler from hurling himself down into the entryway.

The master bedroom door opens, stunted and jerky; Sam probably pulled the knob. He likes things that turn.

"Hey, punkin," Derek hears Stiles say sleepily. "You run away from your daddy? You're an inspiration to us all. C'mere."

He grunts exaggeratedly, probably hauling Sam up onto the bed with him. The mattress creaks in protest as he settles him and the kid under the blankets. He still probably shouldn't be lifting things, especially twenty pound children, but oh, well. Darcy hollers angrily at the feeling of a cold wipe on her skin; Derek can't bring himself to be too sympathetic.

"You're clingy," Stiles tells Sam. "Worried because of the baby?"

Derek is shoving the aforementioned baby into blue footy pajamas, and as if aware of being the topic of yet another discussion, she forces her claws through the feet of them. "Zdzisia, you can't keep clawing through everything I put on your feet," he tells her, popping a pacifier into her mouth.

"Hey, listen," Stiles says, then, and Derek is distracted. "Our family's gonna keep growing, probably. People marrying people and having kids. And you're gonna get bigger, you're gonna grow up—someday you'll _be_ someone. A doctor, or a dancer, or a mechanic. A hatmaker, a farmer, a senator, a horse whisp—" Sam sneezes. "Bless you. I digress.

"The point is," he goes on, earnest, "time will go on, and we'll always pay a little bit more attention to the new guy at first, but you could be eight feet tall and five thousand pounds and you'd _still_ be my baby."

Darcy stills against Derek's chest, spindly claws snagging in his t-shirt, and a gust of wind rustles the trees gently throughout the preserve. The crickets' singing floats in through the open window, and the soda bottle wind chime Scott and Cora once made thunks gracelessly against the siding. Derek breathes.

Sometimes Stiles does this, says something profoundly reassuring out of nowhere, and maybe it's just that Derek needed a moment of comfort, but he thinks it makes everything seem as if it's come full circle. Everything feels centered and right when Stiles talks, sometimes. "'Cause I luh ya," Stiles adds. "I luh ya luh ya luh ya—"

Sam barks quietly.

"I _know_."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic is a blur 
> 
> scott's a [pretty good singer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMIdNmxISms), but he's not a performer by nature. and he doesn't know what a lot of the words mean. it's just that his great grandmother used to sing it to him a long time ago.


	18. where the air is rarefied

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I need a vacation, babies are impossible, and more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know, how is this still happening

"Guess what," Stiles tells Derek sleepily one morning. Derek grunts into his pillow. "My nipples are sore."

Another grunt, this one more desperate for reprieve from wakefulness. He lifts his face from the pillow to look at Stiles. "What is _wrong_ with you."

"I just told you: my nipples are sore."

"Why are you _telling_ me this."

Stiles looks annoyed. Join the club. "I dunno, because you knocked me up twice and I assumed that meant you were interested in what happens to me."

"Only between the hours of ten to nine." But message received. Derek scrubs his palms on his face and props himself up. "Why are your nipples sore."

"Three guesses," says Stiles. He still seems irritated, but obviously the desire to talk outweighs it. "The point is, we need to go shopping for nipple relief. Um, things. Things for the relief of nipples. My _nipples_ need re—"

"I get it," Derek growls, "holy shit. Stop."

"You know," Stiles goes on as if Derek's body language is too subtle for him, "I kept reading everywhere how common it is for partners to have, like, _sympathy_ pain? Sympathy _preggo_ pain? How come _you_ don't have that?" He addresses Derek accusingly. "How come you don't _have_ that? How is _that_ fair?"

"I do, actually. Your nipples hurt, so my head hurts," Derek tells him.

"Oh," says Stiles. Then, after a minute, " _Hey_."

::

The pacifier turns out to have a cosmically apt name, in Zdzi—Darcy's case. It's Derek's universal go-to for her, because any situation can be improved if she's sucking on something.

The sheriff put a hand on Derek's shoulder one morning while Stiles, zombie-like, fed her her breakfast. "Buy thirty of them, all identical," he tells Derek. "Do it now, before you need to. Trust me."

Derek looks at him oddly. "We have several," he starts to say, but the sheriff shakes his head gravely.

"You think you have enough, but you don't." He doesn't know how many they have. Apparently, he doesn't know how many mouths the baby has. "Trust me," he says again, with the vocal weight of a war veteran, the distant gaze of a man who's _seen_ things.

Derek looks to Stiles for a reaction. Stiles stares blankly. "Okay," Derek panders to the sheriff, if only to appease him.

Pacifiers don't strike him as a tip-top issue, at the moment, to be frank. Sam's potty training is in full swing now and, in case you were wondering, it could be going a lot better. But Sam is just a more demanding child than Darcy. Where he requires Stiles' presence at least eighty percent of the time, Darcy couldn't care less who is holding her or why.

She's docile like a lamb. Everyone's favorite party trick is to pass her around from person to person, which she will endure silently and amicably. She's stoic and soft, and thoughtfully reaches for noses. Derek has never felt such an intense love for someone before. There's something between him and his daughter that pulls on his heartstrings so violently he wakes up in the night with it, pads into her nursery to make sure she's still breathing. She always wakes up, and never seems perturbed by it; just kicks her feet sleepily and looks up at him like he belongs there. And, he thinks as he stands in the dark, her mobile knocking against his forehead as it turns, he just might.

::

Which isn't to say he doesn't love Sammy just as much; surely he _must_ love this boy, because he spends half his days gently coaxing him to use a toilet.

And Sammy's terrified of the toilet, for some reason. His plastic one he just doesn't get _along_ with. They got off on the wrong foot, and it went downhill from there. He thinks the potty chair is uncouth and unnecessary. He thinks the toilet is hellspawn.

Derek reads articles, checks out books. He plunks the baby into a stroller and puts Sam on his hip, walks down to Stiles' bookstore to see if there's anything that he hasn't read there. Nothing seems to help. There _is_ something he keeps reading about _demonstration_ , but Stiles is at work all day and Derek is _not_ going to use the toilet with an audience. He just _isn't_. Derek thinks he should be able to get by without that, but Sam is unwavering like Derek and headstrong like Stiles, hysterical like a baby and entitled like an adult. He will not be swayed. He knows the toilet's true nature and he will not be convinced otherwise. Derek frets mildly about this.

Admittedly, he frets about it less than he would if he didn't have a baby who only grudgingly eats her meals, but he does fret, because Sam's toilet fears are thinning him out, fraying him at the ends.

Once Sammy wakes up sweaty and miserable at three in the morning, runs to Stiles for comfort, and after half an hour of directionless conversation, Stiles parses out that he had a nightmare about toilet-related failure. Something about this strikes a chord with Stiles that makes him pensive for a few days.

"Maybe we should back off him for a little while," he suggests eventually, folding one of many faintly stained towels. "Lots of kids don't do it until they're three or four."

Derek glares. "I get that you wanna spoil him," he says curtly, and Stiles looks defensive, "but one of us spends all day dealing with diapers and would like it to end as soon as possible."

"I mean," Stiles says, squinting, "you've never _mentioned_ keeping direct count of who changes more shitty children before, but I can roll with this. Let's see your goddamn _chart_ —"

Derek holds up his hands, still smarting. "Fine," he says, "I'm sorry. But my point still stands."

"Which one." Stiles slaps a folded towel onto the coffee table. "The one where I'm a bad parent, the one where I don't help out enough, the weird implication that I want him to stay in diapers indefinitely, or the one where you're sick of baby poop."

"The baby poop one," Derek drawls. "And I think those first two are redundant."

Stiles shrugs, " _You're_ redundant, but we keep _you_ around."

Derek hits him in the arm, and Stiles tries to kick him off the couch. Sam plays solemnly on the floor, grouping his blocks in neat rows, ordered both by color and decreasing size.

::

Derek lives with someone who needs help eating and someone else who feels directly threatened by the most basic life events. Sam feels abandoned when Derek pays attention to the baby, but put on the spot when he pays attention to Sam. He's so afraid of going to the bathroom that he sits in his small bed and weeps at night. His entire room is coated in a film of anxiety; Derek reaches a fever pitch where he hates going in there because it reeks of unhappiness. No one should be this stressed out, certainly not a fucking two-year-old.

Derek is precariously balancing on a sharp edge when Stiles announces they'll be taking a _vacation_ , of all things.

"Jean's got things on lock," he says briskly of his and Jenna's new manager at the bookstore, "so we're giving her a test. The Hale-Stilinskis are going on vaycay."

"Where," Derek grunts, watching the pink patches on Stiles' cheeks. He's cleaning human excrement out of a bath towel, wearing a weird metal backpack that holds a sleeping baby, so even though he's not sure he's capable of feelings things, he can't help but perk up with intrigue at the prospect of going someplace that isn't here.

"The Martins have a condo up at Tahoe," Stiles says triumphantly. "Right on King's Beach."

Derek snorts. "What are we gonna do at _Tahoe_."

"Any _number_ of things," replies Stiles flippantly. "There's a pool we could take the kids to, we could go to the beach. We could go on a _hike_ ," he says this last word _at_ Derek, leaning towards him the way he says _raisins_ to Sam, or _deer_ to Malia. "But most importantly, we are gonna leave these screeching frat dudes of ours with Scotty, and then we're gonna go someplace alone and pretend to be yuppie-dinks. Antiquing, or something."

The knowledge that Scott will be accompanying them soothes Derek. He's attached to Scott as a nanny; not for the first time, he fantasizes about asking Scott to quit his job and work full time for him, taking care of these kids. On Stiles' hip, Sam has been moaning inconsolably to himself for the last twenty minutes. Now, he quiets momentarily to wipe his nose on Stiles' shoulder. "Bucket," he wails wetly.

"That's a very good point," Stiles tells him.

"We could rent a boat," Derek muses, feeling glamorous and carefree for one brief moment before he recalls the amount of shit on his hands. Still.

"Yeah," Stiles leaps on this enthusiastically. "You could wear a little captain's hat and aviators, and I could sit with a martini and file my nails—"

"Wear a sheer sarong," Derek says, "in white."

"A wide brim hat—"

"A striped tankini."

"What the _fuck_ is a tan keeny," Stiles groans.

"Whatta _fuck_ ," Sam agrees.

" _No_ ," Stiles begs of his toddler, alarmed; Sam stares at him blankly, nose glistening with snot. "Don't—don't be like me! Never swear! Do as Poppy says, not as he do!"

"In his defense," drawls Derek, vainly adding a liberal amount of Oxy-Clean to the works, "he's doing _exactly_ as Poppy says. Just as eloquently, too—"

" _You're_ doing," Stiles retorts, "exact, as Pop—ugh—"

The baby abruptly spits up all over herself and down Derek's back. He winces, and embodies a statue.

::

On the drive up, Derek finds himself wistfully remembering the time he was kidnapped, drugged, beaten within an inch of his life, dragged to Mexico, and transformed into his teenage self. Stiles holds his hand over the center console, which could easily be mistaken as a display of affection; Derek knows it's just an attempt to tether himself to reality. Like a prisoner of war tally-marking the days into the wall of their cell.

Sam sits in the back in his booster seat, angrily reporting every minor thing his sister does ("POPPY, DARBY NAKE A WISTIN," whatever _that_ means) and when they enter the mountains, the car is but a moving block of ear-splitting noise. The kids collaborate to make sure that each of them reaches a pitch that clashes violently with that of the other.Stiles has completely given up on telling them to shut up. It does nothing but contribute to the noise.

Scott and Allison are following them in Allison's dinged up Chevy, and while Scott peers with concern through their back window with faintly glowing eyes, Allison's all smiles, singing animatedly along to whatever they're listening to on the radio. Derek can't begin to imagine what that would be like.

"You're _CLAWING IT_ ," Sam screams at the baby, and she obliges: she beans him in the forehead with a soft vinyl duck they removed from the bathtub at home. " _STOP_ ," he bellows in her face: she screeches and swipes at him with her aforementioned claws.

It's entirely too vehement a reaction, Derek thinks, but one he finds relatable. He himself is about an inch away from pulling over and roaring for ten straight minutes. Scott gives him an empty reassuring smile in the rearview. Beside Derek, Stiles fiddles twitchily with the radio, struggling to find a clear signal that's not shitty talk radio and music from the last century. He can't find any, and they continue to drive, guided by the dulcet tones of Lucha Reyes, Samuel Stilinski, and Zdzisława Hale.

::

About an hour and a half in, they can't take it anymore. Derek screeches into a rest stop and transfers the baby's car seat to Allison's car. "We could take Sammy," she offers perkily, "so you guys could stay with the little one."

"Yeah, there's a proactive idea," says Stiles. "Unfortunately, it's patently impossible."

She addresses him, takes in the sight of Sam, dissolved into tears, clinging immovably to Stiles' leg. "I'n _soooorryyyyy_ ," he's keening. He angrily scratched Stiles in the rest stop bathroom, and was made to apologize. Then he kept apologizing. "He had to get your all-encompassing guilt _and_ my poor self control," Stiles muttered to Derek, mopping snot off Sam's face with a scratchy brown paper towel.

"I'm a _baaaad_."

"Literally no one told you that," Stiles tells him, exasperated.

Derek sighs. He makes a unilateral decision and pushes the baby's two bags of crucials—two flavors of goldfish crackers, a disgusting mixture of baby formula and pureed meat, diapers, a blanket, her pacifier and placating backup pacifier, and a doll of Vincent Van Gogh that Stiles once bought at an art exhibit. She likes to tweak its nose and suck on its hair—at Scott. Scott takes them easily.

She reaches, wide-eyed, for Derek's face when he finishes buckling her whole situation into the back seat of Allison's vanilla-scented car. He pretends to bite her little palm, for no one's benefit but his own.

She benefits anyway: they have a symbiotic relationship. He pokes the pacifier into her mouth.

"Be good and quiet," he tells her. "Feed her in twenty," he tells Scott. "Unplug that godforsaken thing," he tells Allison, snapping his fingers at the vanilla air freshener clipped to the air vent.

She rolls her eyes.

::

Stiles gets Sam to drink some apple juice and yawn, which pops the pressure in his ears, and the rest of the drive is quiet. Sam sits in Stiles' lap, and they play some bizarre game Derek missed the rules for. It seems to involve counting trees and using the number to guess at what sort of fauna might lurk behind them.

It's almost nice, this chance to see the two of them together. Derek spent the months before Sam happened imagining Stiles as a playful sort of parent, and he is, in a way. But when he really shines is drowsy, quiet comfort. He cuddles Samuel close, lays his cheek on Sam's soft hair, and points out the window, whispers something to him. Sam looks, eyebrows twitching like he's considering what he was shown.

Derek thinks of something to text to Cora, and wonders if he could get away with it before Stiles noticed. Probably not.

"Dartsy wiff Alson," Sam informs Stiles.

"Yeah, she's riding with Allison and Scott because you guys wouldn't stop yelling."

"Why?"

"Bec—I dunno, why? Because you're crazypants, probably."

"You're cazypants."

"No, _you_ are."

Derek reaches over and squeezes Sam's foot through his velcro sneaker.

::

Tahoe is _beautiful_. The lake is blue, the trees are green. Everything is jagged, vivid jewel tones. Derek knows the second he gets out of the car that he likes it here, and that he wants to stay. The air is sharp and fresh, with pine in it, and sunscreen, and water. Some mild note of cinnamon. He inhales and it energizes him, like he could shift and run deep into the woods. The gravel and needles crunch under his feet. A breeze zips through from the lake; somewhere not far from here some kids are playing in a pool. A couple of teenagers are walking past them in water shoes, carrying a brilliantly colored canoe. Everything here is so fucking vital. He catches himself returning Scott's roguish grin across the parking lot.

Stiles has Sam up on his shoulders (Sam looks like he's been granted a great power, and with it came great responsibility) and is dialing Lydia on his phone, no doubt to complain that they're not closer to the Taco Bell. He catches Derek's eye, smirks at him in a way that makes Derek almost trip over his own feet.

Derek takes the first opportunity he can to slip away from the rest of them, just for a moment, to stand in the shade of a tree and breathe as deeply as his lungs will allow. It tingles at his fingertips.

"You look right at home here," Stiles informs him, approaching sans kid. Derek cocks an eyebrow, unimpressed. "No, I'm serious. You look like a wood nymph. Maybe it's the eyes."

"That would make you a satyr," Derek comments. Stiles thwips a fist into Derek's biceps, and Derek uses this to drag him closer. "This was a good idea," he says, low.

"We've been here all of five minutes," replies Stiles. "I appreciate your uncharacteristic optimism, though—"

"Re'you implying this could end badly?" Derek gestures incredulously to it all, the expanse of nature and comfort, speckled with healthy recreation and happy families. " _This_?"

"Okay," Stiles panders, full-tilt grinning at him. "It's pretty fuckin' great. I'm biased because I forgot what vacations looked like, but I like it. Better?"

"Considerably."

"There _is_ something weird, though." Stiles looks around at the trees, the nearby knickknack shops, the two kids chasing each other on bikes. "Just… I don't know. Something off. I think I forgot something. Or I'm doing something wrong."

"Maybe you're not capable of appreciating it on my level," Derek replies. "I can hear somebody in one of these condos lecturing some kid about the importance of not playing with himself in the public pool."

" _Dude_ ," Stiles exclaims, jubilantly shoving Derek's chest. It has no effect. "Broadcast it to me! I must hear this!"

Derek kisses him roughly, suddenly enough that Stiles stumbles into him. After a moment, Stiles winds his arms around Derek's neck, losing the both of them in a lazy lake breeze, while Scott corrals their kid. Several hundred feet away, someone goes on about privacy and personal boundaries.

::

They stop in a Mexican place for an early lunch, talk about ideal activities. Scott's spotted a craft fair right by the beach, and he wants to go there and look at some shiny things he saw, things you're supposed to hang up outside so the wind turns them. There's also homemade windsocks and some guy who engraves personalized silver jewelry.

Allison couldn't care less about any of that: she wants to rent a paddleboat, and maybe go parasailing, or rent a bike. "They got kid seats you can snap onto the back," she says. "Sam, you wanna go on a bike ride with me?"

"No," he says thoughtfully, picking apart his cheese quesadilla.

"He'll go," Stiles mouths to her. (She grins; eventually you get used to being rejected by toddlers who don't even deign to make eye contact.) Then, out loud, "Hey, while that's happening, how about Scotty takes the baby to the fair, gets her one of those little crown things they're making." Scott beams at Darcy and says some nonsense babytalk at her. She doesn't notice: she's reaching up and trying to bury her fingers in Derek's beard. "Then me and Derek can sit by the lake and do nothing for a while."

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Derek is filled with excitement at the prospect of it.

Before the waiter gets back with Derek's debit card, Stiles slides out of the booth and takes a picture of them all at the table there, squeezed together like sticky cinnamon buns in a pan.

::

Stiles never takes off his shirt in public anymore, but shorts he'll do, which is how Derek ends up rubbing sunscreen onto his legs on a relatively empty dock, the sun blazing on his back like a fireplace. Or like the _sun_. "How come you can't do this yourself," Derek grumbles at Stiles' sharp kneecaps.

"You know, that's what's funny," says Stiles. "I was _gonna_ , but before I could get the bottle open, you were doing it for me. What's the deal with _that_?"

"Shut up."

"Okay. Naptime for you."

"I'll throw you into this lake," warns Derek. "Don't think I won't."

"You're gonna wash off all this _lotion_ , though, and then you'll have to start _over_ , and—"

"Excuse me," someone says nearby. Stiles twists around, squints up behind him at the person who spoke. Shields his eyes with one hand.

Derek realizes it's a werewolf while they're looking at each other. The odd behavior makes sense, and he settles back into applying sunscreen to Stiles' shins. It might just be an excuse to grab his calves. Stiles kicks at him distractedly.

"Are you—" The guy cuts himself off, embarrassed, and then plows on: "Are you a Hale?"

Stiles points silently at himself, and then at Derek. At some unsuspecting old guy dozing off with a fishing pole nearby. And, finally, back at himself. The guy nods. "Uh, n—well, by marriage. Why?"

"Then it _is_ you I'm looking for." He beams at Stiles. Derek's hackles are inexplicably raising.

"Is there a problem?" Derek says itchily, "because I barely have the energy to protect him from UV rays, let alone from some territorial—"

"Bite me," Stiles says under his breath.

"Oh, no, there's no problem," says the guy. "Y'see, our emissary told us about you. You're the one who became with child."

Stiles' face goes blank for a second—as blank as it can when it's scrunched up against the vivid sunlight bouncing off the lake. Then he tries to own it: he drawls, "Guilty, I guess."

"Then it's true!" Stiles winces when he says that. The guy's getting even more excited. "You actually bore the fruits of labor?"

"It actually says that in my high school yearbook," says Stiles, sharing the briefest of weird looks with Derek. "Most likely to bear the fruits of labor. I thought it was really weird at the time, but then, well—"

"Now, settle a bet," the guy goes on as if Stiles never spoke—something everybody that knows him does, but this person _doesn't_ know him, and Derek has to squash down the bizarre urge to punch the back of his leg so he falls down. He looks altogether too smug for somebody who approached a total fucking stranger and started grilling them about their methods of reproduction. "We were all talking about it and couldn't figure out, like, a reason the husband would be able to do it. You know? So, like—it was the true alpha's seed, right? Be honest."

Stiles has given up. He looks at Derek. The last time he looked at Derek like that, it was because he'd burned himself trying to fix his Jeep for the very last time. Derek gives in to his impulse, and the dude glances off the edge of the dock and into the lake. It's _really_ cathartic. Derek should really let his instincts rule him more often.

One look at Stiles' face indicates that it was the right decision, too.

"You're getting a sunburn," Derek tells him while the guy splutters his way back onto the dock ("My phone—my _phone_ —"), poking Stiles' face where it's gone a vibrant pink.

"Yeah," says Stiles, still looking soppily delighted. "That's it. Sunburn."

"Lemme guess," the guy says angrily when he's safely out of the lake and wringing out his jacket. " _You're_ the husband."

"Guilty, I guess," Derek says shittily.

Stiles' happiness is fucking palpable.

::

"God, I can't believe you _defended_ my _honor_ ," Stiles is gushing back in the Martins' condo as he paces around plucking stray child memorabilia from the living room floor. "I gotta tell everyone about this."

"His accent pissed me off," Derek replies flatly.

"Nope, nuh uh." Stiles points at him with a hand that's also holding a yellow washcloth and a toy airplane with a face. " _He_ pissed you off. For _implying_ things about me."

"Yeah, he implied Scott would sleep with you," says Derek. "If anything, I was defending _Scott's_ honor."

"Scott would _totally_ sleep with me," Stiles tells him. Pauses. Then he adds, "If I cried, maybe. Don't change the subject, you earned a _whole entire blowjob_ today."

Derek tosses a crummy sponge into the sink, rounds the bar, and approaches Stiles, whose hands are completely full of scavenged toys. "A whole one?"

"Not just a part of one. Not just the tip, you feel me?"

"I _think_ I feel you."

"That thing is going _so far_ into my mouth," Stiles begins, laughing to himself, but then disaster strikes.

::

" _Where the fuck did you put it_!"

"I _mailed it_ to _Japan_ ," answers Derek, jaw clenched. "I put it in her _fucking mouth_ , Stiles, where—" 

"Look, dude, I can't deal with this," Stiles snaps. Zdzisława’s been crying ceaselessly for hours, and Stiles is buzzing with panic. He's lifting his hands, taut wrists hovering pointlessly next to his head. "I need you to—" The baby wails, somehow, even louder. Stiles presses the insides of his wrists against his temples. "Oh, oh shit—" Derek takes four deep, raking breaths, and then seizes the couch cushions and hurls them elsewhere, to begin his third time tearing the living room apart. The most infuriating part is that every time he's done this, he's found something new; and every time, that new thing has not been the baby's missing pacifier. "I need you," Stiles now yells over the sound of her crying, "to _retrace your steps_. Where did you last _go_."

Not fucking helpful. "Everywhere."

"What?"

Derek whips around and enunciates _at_ Stiles, " _Everywhere_ , Stiles. You have dragged me to _every inch of this compound_."

Stiles' face is set in a permanent wince, like a physical manifestation of his auditory discomfort. "We have to _stay calm_ ," he tells Derek for about the forty-fifth time. "We—oh," Sam's approached Stiles again, and is tugging on his pant leg, bawling. "I know, I know, I—I'm tired, too, I—oh please don't do that—" He's dropped to his knees to pry Samuel's claws away from his own head. "We have to _stay_ ," he announces again, " _calm_ —"

It's been so long. She wouldn't eat dinner. She wouldn't let them give her a bath. It's like a hungry cry, but unending. Nothing they do soothes her. Derek had, after two babies, considered himself more or less immune to crying; but the longer it's gone, the more he's deteriorated, and he can also hear the neighbors complaining outside and in nearby buildings. It's nearing eleven-thirty at night and the closer it gets to midnight the more the anxiety claws its way up Derek's throat. This is worse than her first full moon: at least then they didn't have any neighbors. Here Derek is trapped with a group of inconsolable people and boxed in on all sides by whispers and sidelong glares. 

Scott bursts in through the front door for the billionth time tonight. " _Still_ nothing. I looked everywhere short of under the hood." He gulps, frantic and thoughtful. "Should I look under the hood?" Before he can get an answer, Derek snatches the baby up from her crib and shoves her into Scott's arms. He and Derek are the only two who can prevent her screams from turning into howls, and once she starts howling—well, Derek doesn't want to know what'll come calling. At best, it'll be even louder.

"S-stay," Stiles is telling himself, now furiously pretending not to be in tears himself, " _calm_."

And Derek's lost the part of his humanity that can see in the basic color spectrum. Everything's in varying values of reds and yellows, flashing with different sounds and changes in volume. He's on his hands and knees behind the TV. He's found Sam's sippy cup, and the cartoon girls from _Frozen_ are on it, mocking him. Scott is holding the baby, rocking her helplessly, and singing the same single line from some song from RENT over and over and over again. He's actively bleeding in two different locations. Samuel is trying for the eighth time to leave the condo through the front door, for some reason, and Stiles miserably drags him, wailing, back to his bedroom.

And then it happens.

The front door bangs open: Allison arrives.

And she is holding a bag from Rite-Aid.

And she opens it, and produces from it a pacifier that is identical to the one they lost.

And she is the most beautiful person to ever walk the planet. Surely, this is the ideal human being.

She stomps through the condo, throws a stray bar stool aside, and violently proffers the pacifier to Scott. Scott snatches it out of her hand and tucks it into the baby's mouth. It takes a couple tries, but finally she recognizes what's happening and sucks it in. Five minutes later, Samuel finally starts hiccuping. Ten minutes later, the building is silent. Fifteen minutes later, the kids are asleep.

"That was terrible," Derek says sleepily into the phone. "You were right. I was wrong."

"I didn't call to get you to prostrate yourself to me, son," the sheriff replies. "I just wanted to make sure no one died."

"No one died." Derek visually checks with Scott to confirm. Scott, applying a _Frozen_ band-aid to his biceps, gives an _eh, tomayto tomahto_ sort of gesture. "But it was touch and go for a little while there."

"When Stiles wasn't too much older than Sam," says the sheriff, "he would only drink out of this certain kind of cup, and one day he ups and finds the cup and throws it away in the garbage. And then dinnertime rolls around, and he refuses to drink anything. His mother and I loaded this screaming kiddo into the van and drove around trying to find this one damn cup, and nobody carried it anymore. It was hell. The fact that my wife somehow ended up finding it in the trash should indicate our desperation."

"Why did he throw it away?" Derek looks at Stiles, like he'll have some sort of insight. He's zonked out with his head in Derek's lap, drooling on his jeans. "If he liked it so much?"

"Because children are children, and their purpose is to test your sanity," Derek's kids' grandfather answers sagely. Derek considers this, watches Allison as she opens up the plastic packaging on the last of ten brand new pacifiers, and then throws back the last of her can of beer. He believes he failed that test tonight, but Allison came through in a pinch, like she and Scott always do. Judging from the look on her face, Derek can't see her willing to come through in a whole lot more pinches in the future. She never signed up for kids.

Even Scott, who found no solution other than his willingness to make sure the baby didn't summon a fucking demon or something, provided immeasurable relief. Once again, Derek finds himself consumed with gratitude. Against his leg, Stiles mumbles nervously, and Derek smoothes his hair back until he falls quiet. What's miraculous, Derek thinks, tuning in to the congested breathing of his spawn in the next room, is that he doesn't love her any less. Sure, he'd probably sell her to the circus if someone offered him a nickel, but he loves her.

"So," the sheriff says, and Derek twitches to attention. "I heard you defended my son's honor today."

Derek shoves Stiles off the couch and onto the cushions littering the floor. Stiles doesn't wake up.

::

On their third night there, some jackass starts playing a bagpipe in the middle of the night. "We're not the loud assholes of the complex anymore," Stiles gleefully reports to Derek, on his knees in the bedroom closet. He drags Derek's pants zipper down. "Let's see if you can't keep it that way."

Derek accidentally knocks down a few garment bags, but it's worth it.

::

They leave after breakfast, having spent a week in what Derek is now convinced to be the most beautiful place on earth. "It wasn't Hawaii," Stiles says over eggs, "but it was nice. I liked it. Did you like it here, white wolfo?"

"Yeah," Sam replies happily, plump cheeks dimpled and crusted with food. "Wolfo."

"We'll have to come back sometime, huh."

"No."

"Don't let me check in with Jean, not even when we get home," Stiles directs at Derek. "If she burned the place down, I don't wanna know until my vacation is officially over, capiche?"

Darcy spits up on herself, but most of it got on the bib. Scott makes really good eggs sunny side up, Allison's a morning glory who produced doughnuts as the asscrack of dawn, and Stiles' eyes have never looked so pretty as they do here by the lake. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> behind the scenes: sam took the pacifier. it is buried in the sand at king's beach. i dunno where the backup went. stiles isn't super organized.


	19. "joy"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I should have fallen into a groove by now, are ghosts real, and more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why are you still doing this to us betp

"She _adores_ Scott," Stiles informs Cora, who is texting.

They're spread out on a splintered picnic table at the park, watching Scott parade around a clearing with Darcy on his shoulders, Sam and Vernon trailing after him with varying success. It's early spring, chilly. Monica laughs at something in her book. She does look incandescent, Darcy, in her way. She doesn't squeal and laugh like Sam did at her size; she just brightens in the eyes, smiles, claps her little hands. 

"It's a good thing, too," Stiles goes on. Cora glances at him, as if amazed he's still talking. "If she didn't, we'd have to sell her and use the proceeds to buy a jacuzzi." Sam trips and falls on his face; Verny sits on the spot, as if playing follow-the-leader. "It's something I'd do to anyone who didn't like Scott," says Stiles.

Derek is glad he likes Scott.

::

"Okay, new game, new game," Stiles wheezes, only about 80% able to stop laughing. "Top five weirdest stuff that went down in Harry Potter."

"Movies or books?" Derek asks.

They're at the dick table eating breakfast; for his birthday, Boyd requested eggs and bacon. Derek obliged. There's ham in the eggs.

"Wearing a _hat_ today," Sam announces winningly to no one and everyone. That's the thing about being a toddler, is the entire world is your audience. He's balancing his parrot on his head; it keeps slipping off. Vernon, seated beside him, gravely mimics him with a plastic bowl that until recently held a portion of grapes.

" _Those_ aren't hats," Stiles tells him to copious laughter, " _goofballs_. Books," he adds, pointing at Derek with a fork.

"Okay, uh, first of all—" Derek pauses to eat a crouton. "The fact that everyone has magic powers is pretty weird—"

" _Stop_ it," Stiles exclaims. His eyes are wide, not necessarily with shock that Derek is this way. More like shock that Derek continues to be this way even though everyone knows he is this way by choice. "You know what I frickin' mean. This totally goes against the spirit of the law."

The baby screeches, pulls herself to her feet by Derek's hair and stands in his lap. "Ow. Fine— _ow_ , holy—" Try getting sweaty, sticky baby fists out of your hair. Just go for it. Give it a try. Her hands are too small to pry open. "Dumbledore. Ow."

"Dumbledore. Just, the guy? The _guy_ is weird?"

"The guy is _really weird_ ," Derek says. "He collects, um—" He's lifted Darcy so that she's not hanging her entire weight on his hair follicles. She knees him in the face. "We should, um—"

"No, I'm not gonna help you until you play my game."

"I'll help you," says Boyd, but Stiles drops his fork audibly.

"No! Don't help him! He's blowing off my game!"

"Maybe he's blowing off your stupid game because there's a baby pulling his hair."

"Fine," Derek says, once Boyd's pried the handclamps off his scalp. "I've got it. Ready?" Stiles looks miffed, but considerably ready. "Books say everybody wears robes instead of regular clothes. Right?" Stiles nods once, businesslike. "But you're picturing robes _over clothes_ , aren't you?" A suspicious squint. Heartened, Derek goes on, "What are they wearing _under_ their robes? Do they wear medieval type stuff? Are they just draped in fabric with no underwear on?"

" _Dude_ ," Stiles hisses. His eyes are lighting up like a pinball machine. "Boyd!"

"I don't care," Boyd says. Monica laughs.

"Allison!"

She shrugs apologetically. "I never read the books."

"I gotta ask Scott," Stiles remarks to himself, sitting back and cramming a fry violently into the side of his mouth. "Remind me. Don' let me forget. What kinda shoes do they wear? Do they—" He makes a sudden gesture at Derek, a sort of _get this_ gesture. "Dude! Imagine Dumbledore standing over an air grate like Marilyn Monroe."

Derek chokes on a spinach leaf and hacks hysterically for a while.

"Cover your _mouf_ ," Verny says sternly, the first thing Derek's heard him say this morning. In fact, it's his first complete sentence. Boyd's eyes open all the way for the first time all day.

::

For Derek's birthday, he requested nothing; just time in a room to think. Therefore, Scott's pack gives him an office.

The basement is mostly Derek's domain; it's where the laundry hookups and the ironing board are and where the huge chest of chains and various restraining torture devices for unanchored wolves is stashed under the wooden steps. It's where Derek stores chemicals the kids can't have, and where he poorly hides Stiles' birthday gifts. Pinned to the naked wooden studs in one wall is an old banner, with ladybugs on it. Says, _Happy 8th Birthday, Scott_ , with a number 1 conspicuously Sharpied in front of the 8.

But "You should have a place to hang out that's not for chores," Scott told him, hefting a bucket of paint. "Consider it a thank-you for everything." _What_ everything? Derek can't think of what he's done to deserve this.

Up 'til a month ago it was just another unfinished bedroom, but now it's got fresh hardwood flooring and painted walls. A set of built-in bookshelves framing the window. It's not perfectly soundproofed, but it is quiet. The wood is dark, cherry, and the shelves are filled with Derek's books—old tomes and photo albums he rescued from some of his parents' many hidden storages, thick texts on unrelated subjects, books he or Stiles bought secondhand for college. High school yearbooks and notebooks full of research, binders of inherited baseball cards and several bibles with family members' names scrawled inside the front covers. Laura's CD collection takes up one full shelf; the bottom shelves on all the bookcases are exclusively for comic treasuries, all Derek's.

What little wall is visible is a dusty grey, and the window has heavy, dark curtains framing it, giving the room a shady and calm effect. Derek shuts himself in there once he's tricked his children into passing out after lunch, slinks behind the heavy desk and sits in the leather chair. He waits. Just to let the silence ring for a second. Just to enjoy his favorite part of the whole room, aside from the new computer: there is an eclectic mix of differently sized, colored, and textured picture frames all over the room, some on the desk and some on the shelves and some on the walls—one of each of his kids in a huge pile of leaves, Sam throwing them around and Darcy examining them like a scientist; Scott and Lydia as prom king and queen; Stiles, a year or two ago, sullen and brandishing a middle finger.

In between a couple ancient, deteriorating textbooks, a picture Derek didn't know existed stands framed: Derek, slumped on the couch with Sam at about a year old, patiently reading a book to him and his parrot.

Derek isn't sure where, but somewhere they procured Laura's senior picture: an awkward staging where she's wearing a flowy white blouse and frayed jeans, but no shoes. She's lounging against a fake brick wall and holding a flute. (She played the flute in high school.)

Every time Derek comes in here, it's to do something. Every time, he forgets what he came in here for, and looks at all his pictures instead. Today he came in to get started on his tax forms, but he swivels around in the chair instead to look at some more pictures nailed to the wall:

Stiles with Malia on a golf course, each wearing a soft-looking yellow polo shirt; Boyd, Monica, and their son in front of a Christmas tree; the sheriff with Darcy cradled in his arms the day she was born; perplexingly, Kevin Costner as Robin Hood ("He's a part of our family, Derek," Stiles informed him); Stiles at 13, braces bared, at his own ill-advised bar mitzvah; Cora on Halloween, eyes shut in quiet and presumably drunken happiness, dressed as a can of Coke; Stiles, again, several years ago, in the front seat of Derek's Camaro, wearing Derek's sunglasses, yelling for some reason; the three kids-thus-far, all wailing horribly because they're being forced to hold letters that spell out JOY. Allison's idea.

He reaches out and takes one off the desk in front of him. The frame is a clunky, beveled mahogany, and the photo inside it is a cell phone photo of Stiles, in a baseball cap turned backwards, and Derek, hair mussed into messy waves, squinting into the sun, San Francisco and the bay stretching out behind them. The sky's pinks and oranges; they're both wearing Giants memorabilia; Stiles' cheeks are sunburned; and Derek looks tired, disgruntled, caught off guard, and deeply, embarrassingly in love.

Someday soon, probably, Derek will be able to actually use this office. He'll be able to come in here and get something done without spending the small amount of time he has gazing at all of these pictures. But he can't help it for now. It's been a long time since he's had pictures.

::

Stiles' turtle-shell go-cart hits a banana peel and accidentally spins over the finish line before Scott's does, and he drops his controller in abject shock. "I can't believe it," he breathes. "Is this real? Is this _happening_? Scotty—" He turns to Scott. "Did I just _beat you_?"

"Dreams do come true, buddy," Scott assures him, grinning slanted and heartstopping at him.

Stiles' eyes pop open in outrage. "You _let_ me win!"

"What? No—"

"Yes, you did!"

"How—"

"You did! Admit it!"

"You can't prove it," says Scott, but such is his downfall.

Stiles dissolves against the couch. "I can't believe this," he moans. "Everything I've ever known is a lie."

"I'll kill him for you," Derek offers around a mouthful of Cap'n Crunch.

::

After a long, long (long, long, _long_ ) night, the kids are asleep and the dishes are done. Well, the dishes are taken care of. Comparatively. The dishes are no longer a heap of congealed tomato sauce all over the table and floor. Instead of his usual quick run-through of a temple in a video game or low-volume perusal of the Weather Channel, Stiles drags himself across the couch and into Derek's lap. Warm and heavy there, still slightly damp and smelling like Mr. Bubble from his relatively successful journey to bathe their offspring.

"Didjou—" He has to stop and sigh contentedly for a second. "Figure out wha's wrong with the microwave?"

"Nah." Stiles' peculiar eyebrows were made for kissing. Something about his dumb eyebrows draw Derek's mouth like a magnet, but for lips. While he's there, he kisses Stiles' eyelid, too. Stiles squirms; his arm was pinned weird. "Tried. Guess you'll have to live without your nasty breakfast burritos for a while."

"Life is _torture_ ," Stiles announces, flopping his head back dramatically like a swooning dame. Derek watches his throat while he lies there, gazing at the dining area upside-down. "Hadda rough day," he explains. Derek puts a fingertip in the hollow of his neck. "Tell me about _your_ day."

Derek does; today was average, which is to say, a hurdle nobody quite made it over. Which is to say, uneventful. Messes all over the kitchen at lunch, messes all over the bathroom later on. Sammy colored in a coloring book for a while, and then decided this was boring; he colored seriously and artfully on a bank statement for a while before he was thwarted by his parent. Darcy's started fussing whenever Derek's focused on something other than her, and he can't really get anything done. Meanwhile, he'd unscrewed the microwave door off its hinges when he received a picture message from Monica and forgot why he was doing it. Stiles laughs heartily at that, trying lackadaisically to keep it quiet so nobody wakes up. Then he curls into Derek's neck.

"I'm _lucky_ ," he mutters meaninglessly.

"You're _stupid_ ," Derek corrects, but he lets Stiles curl up in his arms like a labrador that thinks it's a lapdog. It's no strain on Derek's limbs. Maybe _that's_ why Stiles is lucky.

Stiles repeats firmly, "I'm _lucky_." Punctuates it with a kiss to Derek's throat. He fidgets with the buttons on Derek's shirt. Nudges his fingers under them to press into Derek's chest. "We're like a sitcom with a lotta heart," he says. "Where you're the hot wife that stayed in shape and I'm the doofy baconbringer who got all—"

"If you keep going with this comparison I'm gonna fight you," Derek interrupts. The heat shudders out of his voice at the end; Stiles is mouthing sort of lazily at Derek's neck and it's making him feel a little needy.

"You'd have to catch me first."

"I can run pretty fast."

"I got you new running shoes for Christmas." Stiles makes a soft little hum, closes his lips on Derek's skin and sucks there, one hand absently groping Derek's chest. When he keeps talking, inanely, it's muffled and disjointed. "Can'—keepa secret for a _second_ —"

"What was the point of bringing that _up_ ," Derek wonders somewhat breathlessly. With a wet sound, Stiles pulls back and admires his handiwork. "I didn't ask, I didn't even _tempt_ you."

"Oh, you're tempting me. There is—" Stiles nips one more time at Derek's neck, where, presumably, he's left a hickey like they're at their 8th grade formal. "Much temptation. You're a temptress."

"I'm a slut."

"No, a seductress," Stiles laughs, "but I liked hearing you say that sentence for some reason. I was into it. Say it again."

"You are so _weird_ —"

"You feel this right here, I _want_ you." His tone is joking, but the erection he's dragged Derek's hand to is dead serious. Stiles' boner has never told a joke in its life. Derek palms at it, and Stiles happily slides his hands up Derek's shirt.

Watching Stiles' face intently, Derek adds, "You're too weird for this. I have to divorce you now."

"I have a feeling you don't know how to divorce people," Stiles mumbles as Derek unbuckles his belt. "You're so confused. Lemme help you out."

Somehow, Stiles kisses Derek so good he forgets what he was doing. He gets lost in the kiss itself and the weight on him, caught up in dizziness. Tugs helplessly at Stiles' knees, vainly thinking that he can get Stiles still closer than he already is. He's so turned on his blood is rushing in his ears, only barely broken by the small noises Stiles is making. When he starts to feel inexplicably suspicious, watched, it almost pisses him off. He almost feels robbed of this. He gets his wits back quickly, though.

"Stiles," he says, the word sludged crooked against Stiles' mouth. "Stiles."

"Mmwha—"

"Stiles." Stiles stops. The heat in his eyes is enough to make Derek twist up with want. "There's—um, we have an audience."

"An _au_ —" Stiles almost falls off the couch whipping around. On the stairs, peering at them through the railing, Sam frowns irritably. Derek pushes Stiles off his lap and quickly replaces him with a throw pillow. "Sam handwich! How come you're out of bed?" Stiles asks the kid, his voice somehow making it sound like he's half worried about him and half hurt that Sam would betray the rules of bedtime like this. There's not a trace of bass in his voice, nothing to suggest what he was just doing. He's so much better at that than Derek is. He can switch gears from non-kid to kid in a second flat. Not for the first time, Derek wonders if he'd be better suited staying home with them than Derek—but then Derek would have no use aside from his money.

Sam doesn't respond, though, just stumbles a little against the rails, sucks his thumb into his mouth. He's gotten big, Derek thinks suddenly. Didn't he used to sort of fit in Derek's hand?

"Huh?" Stiles prompts. When Sam stays silent, Stiles moves to get up: "Let's go back to bed, kiddo."

"No," Sam whines, thumb hovering wet and gross in front of his mouth. Stiles nudges him up the stairs. " _No_ ," again, "stay _down_ stair, wanna stay _down_ stair—"

"But it's nighttime," Stiles argues reasonably. "Don't you wanna sleep? Let's just go lie down. Check it out. Check out that bed."

Accompanied by quasi-constant protests, Stiles herds the kid back to his bedroom, and Derek stews in his own stubborn embarrassment on the couch. He could listen to Stiles put Sammy back to bed, but he's too tired; he sinks back into the couch instead. It occurs to him that the room's gotten dark; they never turned the lights on after the sun went down.

He's just hit the climax of feeling stupid when he hears Stiles call him hesitantly from upstairs: "Hey, um, Der? Can you, uh—?"

What _time_ is it, anyway? Derek glances at his phone on his way up the stairs. It's only nine at night. It felt later; at least one refusal to stay asleep is par for the course this time of night. One of the floorboards is loose, and Derek makes a mental note to fix it this week. He pushes open the ajar door, expecting to be required for reading or something, but Stiles is standing by the window, gnawing on the side of his thumbnail. He glances worriedly at Derek.

"Look at this," he says. He sounds a little hysterical.

It takes Derek a moment to realize what exactly he's supposed to be looking at, but once he sees it, he feels frozen in place. The screen outside the window pane is torn through, rent in distinct gashes and pulled away from the metal frame. There are scratches on the glass itself, too. Something tried to get _in_ here. Slowly, pulsating with shock, Derek turns and looks at Sam. Sam looks back.

"A ghost came," he explains matter-of-factly, tremulously.

"A ghost?" Derek prompts. Stiles is holding Sam's hand; from Sam's other hand dangles his parrot, hanging helplessly by its cloth tail. "What kind of ghost?"

Sam looks up at them like there's a right answer to this question, and he doesn't know it. Derek feels a surge of frustration.

"You saw it? What did it do, Sam?" he asks.

Sam hiccups once. "Flew?" he tries.

"It flew where. Away?"

"No…"

"Where did it go?"

"N-no…"

"I don't think he saw," Stiles says, low. "I think he just up and came down the stairs." He looks down. "It was scary, huh."

" _Yeah_ ," Sam says with relief. "It's a _loud_ ghost."

The feeling of being immeasurably stupid crashes over Derek again. Something tore up the screen and clawed at the window enough to wake Sam up, but he didn't hear a thing because he was engaged in living room foreplay. What _is_ he, nineteen goddamn years old? Is this a fucking _frat_ house? That something could have gotten into his house and hurt his kid without him even knowing fills him with rage. He squashes it down, crouches before Sam and hugs him tightly. "You're okay," he tells him after a minute. Making sure it sounds casual, like when the kid got scared of a dump truck. "See?" Nothing to be afraid of. "Window stopped it. You're safe. See?" he inanely adds again.

"Yeah," says Sam, heartened.

"Ghosts can't get in here."

He looks skeptical. Shuffles his little sock feet. "Can't get in _here_ ," he repeats, a little ritually, like he doesn't totally buy it. He looks up at Stiles, who gives him a distracted sort of smile, and then back at Derek. He's chewing on his lip so ardently his mouth's twisted sideways.

"Wanna sleep with us tonight?"

"'Kay." Nonchalantly. Like Derek can't see him deflate with relief at this suggestion. Truly this is his child.

"We should call the prom king," Stiles decides, lifting Sam into his arms. He doesn't want to mention Scott or the kid'll get it in his head Scott's coming over to visit—and then he'll never go to sleep. "See if he can't, you know—"

"I know," Derek interrupts him. "I'll do it."

"I'll check on the baby," Stiles says, this just occurring to him, and he turns quickly, Sam peering over his shoulder in consternation. Derek approaches the window slowly and touches the smooth pane, tracing the scratches with his fingertip. They're on the other side of the glass, but they still seem like a penetration. He feels profoundly unsafe in here now, especially now that Stiles isn't with him.

This is it, he thinks. This is what he was afraid of.

::

The scratches, Derek observes, continue onto the siding, gouges at the base of the frame where who- or whatever it was tried to push the window open. But they evidently failed. "So we know it's probably a shapeshifter," Scott says, voice soothing and serious. "Since the, uh—they couldn't get in. Can you think of any shapeshifters who'd want to break into your house?"

Derek hems, but doesn't haw. A long time ago the Hales had a lot of enemies. Nowadays there's so few of them left, and the remaining members are so young that no one really pays them any mind. Still, there are probably a few grudges that survived the sympathy earned by the fire. A few who could hold a kid for ransom or sell a kid to a sadist with a curious streak. "I can think of a few with motive, but I haven't seen them—I mean, I can't imagine—it's been _years_." Now he haws. There's something blowing into town, a storm, wind cold and sudden. It would be a nice night if it weren't for the wind and the attempted break-in.

"Jeez," Scott sighs. He leans back in the porch swing he and Derek built together last year, and the chains groan under the redistribution of weight. "I wish there were werewolf police. You know? We could call them and make a report, assume they've got it handled."

" _You're_ the werewolf police," Derek reminds him. Scott laughs, and then claps a hand over his face. The nerves are getting dulled, half by exhaustion and half by sheer lack of fruition. "Not knowing anything is probably making Stiles crazy."

"He's being _uncharacteristically_ chill," Scott commiserates, huffing a little, "considering it was his kid's bedroom window. Like…" He widens his eyes in a way that suggests the comical amounts of crazy to which Stiles ordinarily aspires.

"The kids mellow him out," Derek replies, only realizing it as he says it. "I think he subconsciously balances them out. It's why he's so good with 'em." He fidgets with his wedding ring. "It doesn't mean he's not freaking the fuck out right now."

"Yeah. I know."

Speak of the devil: Stiles scurries out the creaky screen door, arms wrapped around his middle. "He's asleep," Stiles tells them. "We did magic to keep ghosts out."

"Really?" Scott smiles expectantly.

"Sort of," Stiles says. "He knows about salt and mountain ash, so I put down some of that at the door and the window sill. I'll break it so you can go to bed," he adds to Derek. "I just don't know what else to _do_ …"

"I mean," says Scott, "what else _can_ we do? You built the place out of rowan for this reason. It did its job: no one got in."

"But what if the thing comes _back_?" Stiles hisses. "What if it gets a human accomplice? It didn't come in through the front window or through the back door, it went straight for my _kid_. I wanna know _who_ and _why_. I wanna know if they're coming for the _baby_ next. She can't even come and _get_ us."

"I feel you, dude." Scott's standing up and putting a hand on Stiles' forearm, squeezing. Derek just watches helplessly. "I get it. I do. And I'm gonna talk to Deaton about other precautions we could take, but—I really don't know what else to do; it's not like he left a note or anything."

"Christ," Stiles says, sighing. Derek figures he's imagining the note this thing might have left. _Sorry I missed you, be back with bigger guns_. "If it hadn't clawed up the window, I wouldn't have believed Sam. I woulda just thought it was a nightmare. _A ghost came_ ," he quotes disparagingly. "And what if it had gotten in? We didn't try very hard when we did it…" He means when he and Lydia followed instructions in an ancient tome to set up protections around the house; he had in fact done it with the passion one typically reserves for homework in an easy class. They hadn't experienced danger in two years at that point; you get complacent eventually. "And Derek and I didn't hear shit downstairs." Scott looks concerned with this piece of information until Stiles adds as an aside, "Promise me you'll always practice abstinence, Scotty."

" _God_ ," Scott gushes, grinning in spite of himself, " _gross_. I'm gonna pretend you guys were—listening to NPR really loud, okay?"

"Cooties," Stiles says to Derek unsmilingly. Derek doesn't know what to do with the sudden, intense affection he feels, so he just hooks a finger in Stiles' nearest belt loop and tugs hard enough to make him sway.

"I'm gonna walk around again," he says then, getting back up. "See if I didn't miss anything the first couple times."

"Come home, Lassie," says Stiles. "You got your phone?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. Scott?" Scott squeezes Stiles' forearm again. "Come in and watch the weather channel with me, please."

As Derek jogs into the pitch black of the trees for another fruitless, anxiety-driven circuit around his family's property, he hears Scott say, "Ten minutes of muzak. Then I'm gonna go with Derek."

And that's what Derek was forgetting about before Sam was born. Scott. Stiles. They're still scared and nowhere, but at least they're all scared and nowhere together.

::

The next morning, Scott's asleep on the porch, covered by an afghan Stiles dragged out from the living room; Sam slept in way late, until six in the morning. Derek, to contrast, woke early after minimal sleep, ashamed that he fell asleep in the first place—not that anything seems to have changed in the interim.

It's a still morning, rain pouring with no wind whatsoever, and Stiles stands by the back door watching it pensively, drumming his fingertips against the coffee mug cradled against his chest. Derek watches him, feeling something familiar and sweet claw its way out of his chest.

"What," he says when he catches Derek looking.

"Nothing."

Stiles squints, suspicious. "Dude," he says presently. "Were you watching me lovingly?" Derek glowers. Stiles shakes his head. "That's so gay."

Derek dips his fingers into Stiles' coffee and flicks some in his face.

::

It's a week later when Derek wakes up from one of a series of vivid nightmares and does a quick circuit of the upstairs, making sure no more ghosts have broken in. Both kids are sound asleep: Sam, sprawled on his stomach with his parrot wedged under his cheek, and Darcy flat on her back with her pacifier in her mouth.

Once he can breathe straight again, Derek wheels, storms back into the master; pins Stiles down in their bed and kisses him desperately and ruts against him. Stiles' mouth opens, his lips drag on Derek's cheek, his jaw and his neck; for the first time in a while, Derek bites down on Stiles' shoulder, hard enough to leave a mark, sharp and opaque, that will last for weeks. And Stiles is so good, so quiet, but Derek isn't, has to bury a shout in Stiles' pale chest when he comes. "Oh," Stiles breathes when it's over, "oh, holy _shit_."

"I'm gonna," Derek pants, thoughts still incoherent, "gonna, I promise, I'll—I'll protect you, I swear—" _All_ of them, Stiles and his children and everyone around them. Scott's words from his birthday ring in his ears, _consider it a thank-you for everything_. If it's the last thing Derek does, he's gonna live up to the guy that Scott and Stiles and Sammy and the baby think he is. "I'm, I _will_ —"

"I know." Stiles swallows, his eyes flutter. "I know. Me, too. We'll, we'll protect each _other_. Right?" Derek doesn't know. He shudders, presses his forehead into Stiles' neck. "I've got you," Stiles tells him, and no, _no_ , that's not what Derek was trying to do. This isn't the direction he was planning this would go. "We're okay."

No, they're not.

"We're okay."

But maybe they could be.

"I _love_ you."

Maybe they are.

Later that week, Sam has a meltdown in aisle ten of the grocery store. Life, Derek guesses, goes on.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> [x](http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/2012/12/08/joy-to-the-world-3/)


	20. adverse, part i

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How to convince my spouse to pause time, angst, and more.

"Happy baby," Stiles is chiming at Darcy in his lap, on their newly purchased lounge chair in the rickety sun room. Derek surveys from where he's shaking cat hair off the rug. The baby might just be chubbier than both Sam and Verny at her age combined; he's tugging at her little fat feet and poking at her belly through her shirt—Erica bought it. It says, in random fonts, _Mommy's a queen, I'm a princess, and Daddy's around here somewhere!_ Erica thinks she's really funny. Stiles sings, "Star baby from space."

She's quiet, but for breathing through her nose. She won't go without her pacifier, and Derek can think of worse attachments to have. She kicks at Stiles, eyes bunching up.

Her calm attitude is a façade. This morning she tried to eat Derek's phone cord; "No," he said, removing it from her grasp, eliciting a cry of horror such as the world had never heard before. Now, her eyes are glinting a dull gold and she's trying in vain to remove Stiles' watch.

She's imperious and quick-witted. She's not walking or talking yet, but there's a sharpness in her eyes that indicates to Derek that she's got things to say, places to go, if only she had the tools to do it. Sam as a baby was empty-headed, simple and sweet, but Darcy is none of those things. Her games are less _we hand this back and forth_ and more _you hand me that and then it's mine_. Her affection is absentminded and calm. You get the distinct feeling, looking at her, that she's just biding her time like a supervillain building an army of evil clones. Derek has vague memories of Cora, less vague memories of their youngest sister.

She's teething, so in general, she's a fussy, feverish, heavy little thing, usually frustrated, always in need of a bath for this reason or that. She rolls in Stiles' lap, and he catches her before she falls off, scrubs excess drool off her face with his shirt. She grunts, squirms her head away.

"Smart baby, barfed this morning," Stiles coos, "so she could have breakfast twice."

She spits her pacifier at him and shouts, "Oh!"

::

Scott's been seeing a woman named Sophia for just shy of a month now. She has a daughter, a chubby six-year-old named Camila. Derek's shoulder throbs sharply: he was carrying the laundry basket weird. He drops it at his feet. "Camila?" he repeats skeptically.

"It's a very popular name," Scott says defensively, bounces Darcy on his hip. Derek rolls his arm, tugs at his shoulder. "I just thought I should let you know this time," Scott goes on—after Angelica let him down, he didn't announce the last couple girlfriends. "Because Soph's bringing Cami by later and, you know."

Derek doesn't know. He puts his hands in his hip pockets.

"Like, it's a strange kid around your kids, so."

Oh. Sweet, actually. Kind of sweet. "I trust you," Derek shrugs. There's a twinge in his shoulder. "I'm sure it'll be fine."

"Be _fime_ ," Sam repeats knowingly, and then buries his face in Scott's pant leg.

And it starts _out_ fine. "I'm _six_ ," Camila tells Sam, and "Sips," Sam repeats, nodding seriously. He has minimal concept of numeric value; he has absolutely no idea he's just been told she's twice his age. She's got long, thick, curly dark hair and Sam's never seen anything like it; he pets it when her back is turned like he thinks she won't notice, an awed expression on his face. "Momaid," he whispers, and she preens under the positive attention.

Scott remarks to Sophia that it looks like they're getting along. ("So he's not yours? He's your… friend's?" she asks him. "He's my godkid," Scott explains proudly.)

But then it's not fine. Camila puts forth one valiant effort to forge a bond with Sam: one grand gesture of offering to let him play with her pack-n-go dollhouse. Derek watches it happen in the middle of the living room, sees it as if it's in slow motion. " _Don't_ ," she says, taking a doll from Sam's hands. "She doesn't _like_ to have _her head sucked on_." She cradles the doll, looks sadly down at it, as a god might look down at the suffering of its people.

"Peas," Sam tries, reaching for the doll.

She tucks it defensively into one arm, leans away from him. "You're gonna put her in your mouth! It's _rude_ to put other people's things in your mouth," she adds seriously.

"Cami," says Sophia firmly from the couch. "He's just little. He didn't mean it."

Sam's mouth twists, fingers outstretched. "Wunnit." Just one more time, voice breaking.

Camila jerks the doll away. " _No_. It's _gross_."

Derek hesitates; a classic rookie mistake. Sam's face _crumples_ , and in an instant, he's shoved the whole dollhouse over onto its back with a deafening crash. " _Heeey_ ," Camila shrieks madly, scrambling after her things. "That's _mean_. You're a _jerk_ — _Mommy_ —"

There's a cacophony in the room, Sophia taking a furious Camila aside, Scott desperately trying to make peace, Sam weeping bitterly, and Darcy banging something hard and plastic against the wall. Derek can't help it. He shuts down.

He absently rubs Sam's back and stares into the ether. He can _hear_ the ruckus, he can _tell_ the anxiety is there, welling up around him like water from a broken dam, but it's removed from him, behind a curtain of numbness. Waiting for him once he gets out. In the nothingness, he has one clear thought: this is what having three kids would be like.

::

"I think we should figure out contraceptive," Derek says gruffly to Stiles. Stiles fumbles the soapy mug in his hands; the ensuing slosh of dishwater ends up down his front.

"Contra—" Stiles repeats. "Then—oh. Yeah, I guess."

"You _guess_." Derek clatters a plate onto the open dishwasher rack. "Were you just gonna pop out ten babies like a Catholic?"

"I woulda gone with _Mormon_ ," Stiles says, pointing at him with the reclaimed mug, "but whatever, dude. I just thought—" He looks down at the lavender-scented suds. "— _I_ dunno, I thought we, we were talking about—that is, _thinking_ about—"

" _You_ were thinking about," Derek interrupts, "and your thinking was misguided. Remember?"

" _You're_ misguided." Stiles isn't even scrubbing anymore, just looking. "I just… had this image in my head…"

He sounds dreamy, pensive. Derek looks at his face in profile against the dark backdrop of the microwave. "An image of what?"

Stiles is quiet for a long minute. Derek takes a minute to appreciate the weight of him, standing on the rug next to Derek, in a dim kitchen at night. Enjoy the silence. "I just pictured," Stiles says carefully, "you know, maybe… five?" He looks quickly up at Derek, hopeful. "Like you and your— _your_ siblings?"

Derek stares. "Five," he says flatly.

"It was just a thought."

"Five. You thought _five_." Stiles falters. His feelings are hurt, but Derek needs him to be here in reality with everybody else. "I can barely handle _two_ ," Derek informs him. "I know you like babies, and I know the—the _hormones really agreed_ with you. But you're not _here_ during the day. Darcy is sick all the time because she's teething; Sam keeps _hiding_ shit. And you want _three more_?"

"I know," Stiles says sullenly to the sink. "I get it."

Derek takes another plate, dries it cursorily, and plunks it down with the others.

"I know we never got to—um, have this conversation," Stiles says, low, "before—I mean, when—it just happened really fast. I know this wasn't what you wanted."

"Five kids?" Derek says again. "Yeah, no. That wasn't in my life plan."

It feels like Stiles had a whole lineup of words, but suddenly they all just disappear, leaving a certain weight in their absence. His whole being looks heavier suddenly. Derek feels like he's fucked up, somehow, but he doesn't know how to convey that he meant it _jokingly_ , but he wasn't _joking_. "Fair enough," Stiles says finally. "I'll… text Deaton. Yeah?"

"Yeah," says Derek.

They finish the dishes slowly, thoughtfully. "You know, the best contraceptive is abstinence," Stiles offers. The humor, and his ensuing chuckle, are halfhearted, but it's something. Derek feels relieved. "I feel really shitty," Stiles adds.

Derek looks at him, startled. The relief is gone.

"G'night." Stiles pulls the sink plug and leaves the kitchen.

::

What Deaton ends up coming up with a few rainy mornings later is some bizarre kind of bottled mixture. "There's some asafoetida in it," he says contentedly, handing it to Stiles, "among other things. But you have to drink it twice a day and—as I'm sure you probably guessed—you have to believe it will work."

"Those are some _rules_ , Doc," Stiles says. His tone is wry, but Derek can tell he's apprehensive. He takes the corked bottle, lifts it and stares at the light filtering muggily through it. "I dunno if I—like, I don't even know what's _in_ it. How do you know it'll _work_? Would _you_ take it?"

"I'm not at risk for pregnancy," the vet says, maybe annoyed or maybe amused. Derek can never tell what the guy's thinking. "I asked around in my circles. Did some research. Evidently something similar to this was used hundreds of years ago, in more ancient wolf tribes." He raises his eyebrows conspiratorially at Derek. Adds amicably, "Your ancestors may have used this." Derek doesn't know what to do with that information.

"How much—" Stiles swallows. He's still looking at the substance. "Um, how much do I…?"

"Wuh," Darcy says, reaching for what looks like a ship-in-a-bottle with cobwebs on it. Derek steps away from the bookshelf behind him. She yells something that sounds like "spoon."

"Owe me?"

" _Drink_."

Deaton grins, amused by his own joke. "Only about a tablespoon at a time," he assures Stiles. "It… might take several weeks to a month for you to acclimate. We'll see how you react to it."

"Like, emotionally?" Stiles uncorks it, sniffs. Makes a face sort of like, _eh_.

"Physically," Deaton clarifies. "You can take it now if you want."

Stiles takes a brief swig. Then he sticks out his tongue, squints his eyes. " _Egh_ ," he says. "Oh, it's _awful_. It's like… it's like grass and egg nog."

He proffers it to Derek; Derek takes it, tentative. Unfolds his glasses one-handed and pushes them onto his face. Just to see all the particles floating in it like pulp in orange juice. Then he hands it back. "Come back in a week or two," Deaton tells him. "I have a Persian with a rotten tooth, but I'd like to ask some things about the baby's stools."

"You're so _gross_ ," Stiles mutters. "Everything you've ever done to me is gross."

They turn to collect Sam from the embrace of a poodle and leave.

Derek adds an awkward "Thanks" as he grips the doorknob.

"You're welcome," Deaton says drily.

::

Derek glances sidelong at Stiles, suspicious. He's hunched over in the seat, arms tight around his middle. "You okay?" he asks gruffly.

Stiles shakes his head once.

"McDoddle!" Sam says suddenly over the sound of the baby fussing, gestures viciously out the window. "McDoddle a _burgers_!"

"No, we have food at home," says Derek.

"No," Sam whines. "Go to McDob—" He misspoke. "Mc _Dod_ dle."

"We're _not_ _going_ to McDonald's."

"No, why?" His voice is climbing, both in pitch and volume; it upsets Darcy, and she starts to cry angrily. "Why? _Why_?"

"I don't feel so good," Stiles says. Rubs at his brow with his knuckles.

"Yeah, join the club. Because we have food at home," Derek directs at Sam. "I just told you that."

"No," Sam shrieks as they drive past the McDonald's. "Peas? _Please_? I _wunnit_ —"

"Dude, you need to pull over."

"Quiet, Sam. What?"

Stiles fumbles with his seat belt. "Derek, pull over right now, _please_ —"

Derek jerks the car into the turn lane, and is stuck behind someone. "Why are you—" Stiles ignores him, practically falls out the car and immediately vomits into a trash can by the bus stop bench. Leaves the door hanging open behind him.

Both the kids are screaming and Derek is sitting in traffic, staring out the open door, feeling inexplicably angry. It's starting to feel like there's not enough air in the car. Not enough air in the world. Cars keep whizzing past him on the main road, and he drops his forehead to the steering wheel. Squeezes his eyes shut and tries to breathe.

::

"You're not gonna stop taking it, though?"

Stiles looks up at him from the couch. He's fully dressed and trying to scrub glitter crayon off the coffee table, but there's a sickly sheen on his face from throwing up this morning. He looks like hell. He also looks seriously pissed off. "Am I gonna stop _taking_ it?" he asks. " _That's_ what you're worried about? I've been throwing up for four days and you're worried I won't drink my _magic birth control_?"

"It was just a question," Derek sighs, "holy shit."

"You're the reason I have to take it in the first place, you know," Stiles snaps—as snappy as he can get when he's feeling this ill. "You _could_ stand to look a little more _contrite_."

"I should be sorry?" Derek tilts his head, squints. "You want me to be _sorry_? Like I _asked_ for this?" He scoffs. "You know, when I first started dating you, _pregnancy_ wasn't really on my list of _concerns_."

"Oh, _really_."

"I'd actually written that off as something I could just _skip_."

Stiles' mouth twists. "Well, _fine_ ," he says, low. "It's gonna stop being a concern. I'm gonna _deconcern_ it. You can _stop being concerned_. You happy now?"

There's dark circles under Stiles' eyes and he hasn't eaten anything but toast and apple sauce since they got back from Deaton's. Of _course_ Derek isn't happy. There's a weird ache in his chest, acidic guilt and a throbbing urge to fix something he can't fix. But there's also a part of him that's simmering, oddly. Like it had frozen, in a bad way, and now it's melting, if he can only keep it hot. Stiles stops looking at him, tucks himself against the arm of the couch and shivers. Derek gets the feeling he's just failed a test. "I'm gonna run to the store," he says uncomfortably.

"Great," Stiles replies, eyes shut.

"I'll be back in an hour, probably."

"Fabulous." He's looking pale and sweaty; Derek ducks out the door before he has to listen to him throw up again.

He brings back three different antacids. Stiles holds them and stares at them without speaking.

::

"You eating a doughnut, buddy?" Stiles asks Sam.

"Yeah." Sam smiles down at his mangled pastry. "It's choklit on it."

"Is it good?"

"Yeah. Papa?"

"What's up?"

"Papa."

"Yeah."

"Papa, it's, um, _choklit_. And they're gonna _take_ it!"

"Who!"

"The _batmans_!"

" _Uh_ oh. _That's_ not canonical. Better eat it quick."

Sam returns to gazing lovingly at his torn doughnut. Then he picks up a piece and chews on it with his mouth open, in true Stilinski fashion.

Stiles manages to finish a quarter of his cinnamon roll, puts the rest of it back in the box. It's probably coming back up later. To his credit, unlike when he was gestating Samuel, the constant nausea—he shakes four Tums into his hand, now, and then goes hunting in the kitchen junk drawer for a bottle of Mylanta—has in no way prevented him from raising his kids. Even now he begins plucking thrown handfuls of doughnut mush from Zdzisława’s trajectory zone, despite the fact that he got zero sleep last night: he spent the night on the couch, hoping not to wake Derek if and when he had to run to the bathroom, which backfired. Derek, it turns out, can't sleep alone anymore. They're both exhausted and pissed off. "How you feeling?" Derek asks Stiles as he sponges down the table.

"Existent," Stiles replies, not really looking at him. He dumps his collection of pastry into the trash and brushes his hands off. "I'm gonna go take a shower."

Stiles never does the cold shoulder. For one, he's really bad at it. The few times in his life he's been angry enough to try it, he spent a lot of time reminding the person he was mad at that he wasn't speaking to them. For another, he's more of a let's-hash-it-out-right-now-fuckface sort of guy. Derek likes that about him. _He's_ more inclined to slink away with his tail between his legs, boil it down until all that's left is passive aggression, but Stiles never lets him. He never lets it boil that far down.

Still, for all intents and purposes, Derek and Stiles aren't really on speaking terms right now.

That's _fine_ , Derek decides at first. If he's going to be this huge of a dick about taking _birth control_ , then let him. Even if he stops taking it, at least Derek won't father another disaster-child. (Sammy somehow overturns an entire pot of spaghetti sauce onto the floor that day, as if to spite him for thinking such a thing. Or maybe to prove him right.)

It's less fine after it's been a week. Derek's angry. He's so angry he spends the night on the loveseat in his office for three nights in a row. He's angry enough to eat dinner early and leave Stiles a plate in the fridge to eat by his goddamn self.

Not that Stiles eats much anymore. He's starting to lose weight, is wan and sort of weak on a good day, trudges listlessly to work every day. If he would grow the fuck up and stop acting like Derek asked Stiles' ex to the homecoming dance, Derek would tell him to take some time off and rest. But he won't, so he won't.

::

There's nothing fine about it by the time it's been a month.

Stiles is sick less often now. It’s just because he barely eats. When he does eat, it’s bread. Plain rice. Apple sauce. That sort of thing: what one of Derek’s sisters used to eat before a long car ride. But for all the diminished regurgitation, nothing's really improved between Stiles and Derek. And to say it’s making Derek nervous would be the understatement to end all others.

Derek is petrified. He’s watching, trapped in his own panic, as Stiles' anger is cooling into an eternal grudge like Jackson Whittemore. Derek’s so preoccupied about it that his hands are usually twitchy; he's uncharacteristically clumsy and stutters when reading aloud. He barely sleeps. He gets distracted in the middle of a task, gets tunnel vision and wonders when Stiles will leave him. Wonders if creating more children is actually Stiles' _dealbreaker_. If that's the only way to make him _stay_. If that's the only reason he's stayed this long in the _first_ place. 

More reasonably, he knows it’s because he’s handled this so badly. Not wanting more children is just a difference in goals; Derek’s been so reactionary about the whole thing he’s probably made Stiles feel trapped. He’s frightened constantly—in fact, faced with the prospect of losing Stiles, the idea of being charged with even more infants seems almost doable. It’s just _children_. He can’t believe how awful he’s been about this. He picked this hill to die on, and it turned out to not even be a hill. There’s a bigger, grassier hill literally a hundred feet west. Derek’s ears are ringing, as usual, and he’s just dropped his wooden spoon for a third time in as many minutes. This time he snatches it up and chucks it across the room. Fuck it. What’s the point?

"Why you're throwing things on the floor?" Sam demands. Rage crashes down on Derek’s head like a tidal wave.

"Because Daddy hates himself, Sam," Derek snaps, and then wishes he hadn't. Not that Sam really understands the sentence structure. But the sentiment makes its way across perfectly fine. He looks like a mixture between dulled pain and confusion. He also _hated_ being snapped at, and will probably cry in about three seconds. Derek drops to his knees and grabs him before he can get a big enough breath in. "I'm sorry," he says desperately, squeezing his tiny body to his chest. Typical fucking Derek. Takes out his anxiety on whoever happens to be softest near him. "I'm so sorry. You're a—you're good."

"Good," Sam agrees tearfully.

" _I'm_ bad," Derek tells him. "Sorry."

Sam doesn't reply. The concept of a parent being subject to the same behavioral rules as he is is probably new and incomprehensible.

Stiles wouldn't be doing this. He wouldn't be having a breakdown all over their toddler. He would probably be furious if he was home from work, and if he had bothered to exchange more than ten words with Derek this week. “I sh, I shouldn’t have snapped at you,” he tells Samuel, tremoring. “It was—” How to palate this for a toddler? “—uh—” He shakes his head.

Sam's little hand steals up to scritch into Derek’s hair. "Don't be sad," he tells Derek in a dreamy, sincere kind of voice. "Stars will come out again. But not yet."

Derek pulls back, stares at him blearily. He finds that he has to blink his eyes clear. "What?"

"We can go ou'side today?" Sam asks, still earnest but otherwise back to normal.

"No, wh—what?" Derek peers behind him, sees that when he came into the kitchen, he'd dragged the afghan from the couch behind him. "Did you—? Sammy. Does that go in the kitchen?"

Sam looks down at it. "Yeah," he says slyly.

"No, it doesn't. Where does it go."

"In the _kitsen_."

"No, it goes on the couch, doesn't it."

" _No_ ," he says gleefully.

"Put it back."

"Goes in the kitsen!"

" _One_ …"

Sam hates the counting. He clumsily transports the afghan back where it goes: a pleasant surprise. Derek stays on his knees on the hard tile. Stars will come out again.

::

That night, Derek sits drowsily on the couch. He's pretending to watch tv, but really he's watching Stiles rock in the wooden chair from Melissa, moved downstairs when the second spore arrived. Darcy's lazily draped in his arms, in her Hulk footy pajamas, not asleep yet: she's watching Stiles' face, less intently than Sam does. More like it's a show she likes or a painting she's been told to analyze. She reaches up at him, and he takes her hand. She worms it free again.

Derek frets, looking at her. Any day now, that kid will be walking. Derek will have to corral two toddlers at once. Soon enough she'll be climbing out of the crib like her brother did. Derek's biggest worry is that she doesn't just come in to find them like Sam did, but that she tries to open the plastic gate at the top of the stairs. She's not human; she could snap through the lock and roll her ass down the stairs, break a bone or smash her head open. And if it's just, like, an arm or something, and it doesn't get set right, it'll heal weird and need to be rebroken and reset. And breaking a baby's arm is the exact opposite of what Derek wants to do in the middle of the fucking night.

"Go to sleep," Stiles tells her soothingly.

She blows him off.

He doesn't really care, Derek knows. This is his favorite part of the entire day. He comes home from work and sprawls out someplace with a kid, touches a soft cheek and kisses some messy, flattened baby hair. Wipes sauce off of someone and changes someone else's diaper. Allows himself to be screamed at during bathtime. He seems to have so much more patience than Derek does, and that's something he wasn't expecting, when this started. "Sleeeep," Stiles tells her, waggling his fingers a couple inches from her face. She grabs at them. Something in Derek's chest cracks in two.

"On the count of three, you will sleep," Stiles is telling the baby. "One… two…" He snaps his fingers. She bucks her whole body excitedly. Translucent baby claws flash on her fingertips as she snatches in the air for Stiles' snappy hand. "Didn't work, did it?" He leans closer, and she pokes her claws at his nose. " _Did it_? Starlight, star bright…"

"Sam said something weird today," Derek recalls. His voice is rough from fatigue and disuse.

"Mm?" Stiles keeps blinking dopily at Darcy.

"Like, really weird."

Stiles finally glances up. There's something weary in his eyes when they fall on Derek, like he's bracing himself for a booster shot. "Oh?"

Derek repeats what Sam said. He doesn't feel like he gets the delivery right. The way Sam said it was _knowing_. Like he had seen the whole world for all its faults and still come out innocent and hopeful. It was _really fucking bizarre_ , and gets more and more bizarre the more Derek thinks about it.

Stiles furrows his brow. "What… what does _that_ mean?"

"I have no idea," Derek says. "The 'not yet' was sort of ominous…"

"Were you sad?"

Derek wasn't expecting that question. Darcy grunts demandingly, flexes her fingers around Stiles' forearm. He absently rests a hand on her belly. Derek'd forgotten what he was feeling beforehand, but now he's embarrassed. "I mean, that's not—he _said_ it really weird."

"Yeah, I gathered that," says Stiles a little sarcastically. His familiar sharpness is dulled, but coming back a little in his tone. It's heartening. "Not what I asked, though."

Derek considers this. "I'm sorry," he says finally.

Sometimes Derek gets the feeling Stiles is a million miles away. He's four or five feet away, and staring directly at Derek, in a dark, pupilless sort of way, lips parted. Serious in a way Derek could never have conceived of when they first met. But there's something about him that's not over there. It's someplace Derek would have to learn magic to follow him to. All of a sudden, Stiles is back. He seems ready to say something, like it's on the tip of his tongue, if only he could make up his mind whether he wants to say it or not.

Just as abruptly, Derek panics. He doesn't wanna hear it.

"I'm going for a walk," he says, and practically jogs out the front door.

He hears Darcy whine for him as he descends the porch steps.

::

He clomps down the hill, steps over the broken fence, and looks up at the cloudy, blackened sky. He can't see a single star.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hashtag sorry about the original characters


	21. adverse, part ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My kid and I both deal poorly with loss, healing sex again, and more.

Stiles calls his cell some fifteen, twenty minutes later. His ringtone is the default. Derek picks up on the last possible ring. There's a brief silence. "You haven't been talking to me," Derek says, and is overcome by a wave of self loathing as he says it. God, what a petty complaint.

Stiles doesn't seem to mind, though. "I've been sick," he replies.

"You've been sick before."

"I've been sick, and I've been pissed at you." That's what Derek thought. "No, lemme amend that. I've been—" He struggles to find the words. "— _sad_."

"Because you're sick."

"Because you don't _care_ that I'm sick," Stiles says, hard. "Because my _abject misery_ is a low price to pay to avoid more children. Because I was fucking _languishing_ in _front_ of you and you were just like, _take a pill and get over it_."

Derek thumps back against a tree, leans there. "Are you being serious?"

" _Yes_ I'm being serious," Stiles snaps. "I have actually _never been this unhappy_ before, and I can't—" He breathes heavily into the phone. "I can't eat, I can't sleep, and I can't even _show_ it, I have this—this—this horrible _compulsion_ to, to _be okay_ , for the _kids_ , and I _can't_ , I can't _do_ it much longer, Derek. I'm _drowning_."

The panic's caught up with Derek, now, buzzing around his ears, climbing up his throat, compressing his arms. "What—what makes you think I don't _care_? I just—I don't know how to—I don't know what to _do_."

"You don't know what to do? Try _not throwing_ it in my face that I'm _gone_ all day, Derek. All the time, you act like I don't _do_ anything, like I haven't been working sixty-hour weeks even though I haven't _eaten_ since I started drinking this _shit_ you made me get. I _know what my kids are like_ , Derek."

Derek's fingers feel cold. He's starting to really hate the sound of his name. He didn't even really realize he was throwing things in faces, but now that Stiles mentions it, there was some bitterness. _Shittiness_. It's difficult to breathe through the guilt. "You're right," he says thickly, in the midst of this recognition. "You're—I'm _sorry_."

"Well…" Stiles still hasn't learned to deal with when Derek suddenly agrees with him. "Okay."

Derek hears what sounds like an owl coming from Stiles' end. "Stiles…" He has to clear his throat. "Where _are_ you?"

Stiles pauses. "Outside."

"Outside _where_."

Another pause. "Loo—look who's _talking_ , okay. Where are _you_."

"I'm two minutes south. I can hear the kids _breathing_."

"Well—" The breathing Derek hears on Stiles' end is a little wobbly, but steady all the same. "I'm… somewhere, probably. I'm not far from the house, just… Somewhere…"

"Really? What're you, Miss Frizzle? Stay put, I'm coming for you."

"Okay," he says softly. Derek doesn't say anything for a minute, while he walks. Then, "I liked that reference, by the way."

"I like _you_ ," Derek replies. "I care that you're hurting." Talk about sympathy pain. Derek might throw up, himself. He searches for Stiles, the sound and smell of him, and finds him on the border of the property, crouching in the dirt and poking at what looks like an earthworm. "Stop taking it," he says, hanging up.

Stiles gasps violently, topples over and lands hard on a tree root. " _Shit_ , you fuck—you _shitfuck_ , you— _why_ —"

"Stop taking it," Derek repeats. He holds out a hand, which Stiles eyes judgmentally. He's still breathing heavily. Then he grasps it, lets Derek haul him to his feet.

"I'm not _taking_ it, it's a _worm_ ," Stiles rasps. "I was just—"

"What? No."

"What?"

"Stop taking the _stuff_." Stiles stumbles, and Derek catches him around the waist. Then he lets go. "Stop—it's not worth it. I didn't mean, I didn't know you—" He has that feeling when one of your limbs is asleep from poor circulation, only muted and all over. “Please,” he says. 

”Please?”

Taking and holding a deep breath, Derek squares his shoulders. "I thought you were mad because I said two kids was enough. I thought you were only in it for—for kids." He feels unbelievably stupid saying it out loud.

If he agrees, Stiles doesn't take the time to show it. "I thought you regretted having them." He brushes dirt off his clothes halfheartedly. "You didn’t plan for this. You seem… tired. And angry, a lot."

"This?" Derek gestures with a whole arm in the direction of their house. "Is my _whole world_."

Stiles looks flatly in that direction. "The tree?" Derek looks. There's a tree right there. He remembers that Stiles can't hear the cat yelling in the kitchen just over the hill.

" _No_ , the house is— _our family_. I'm not—" This is frustrating. Stiles looks small in the moonlight. He's just as tall as Derek, and he's not insubstantial by any means, but he just… _seems_ small. Dampened. "I'm not a fun _person_ , Stiles. Just because I'm an asshole, and just because I can't, I'm bad at _showing_ it, doesn't mean I don't love you so much I—"

"Oh," says Stiles.

"I mean—I'm showing it _wrong_ , I mean—I'm—at _fault_ , I just—" Derek gestures helplessly, not sure what he's trying to convey except that he's run out of words. It's chilly out here; goosebumps are rising on his skin. He lets himself drift closer to Stiles, get pulled in by the tractor beam that is his stare. It's cloudy tonight, but Derek can still feel the moon—just the _fact_ of it, hovering just out of sight but watching him all the same. It, and the stars, are out whether he can see them or not. He reaches out, grabs Stiles' hands—first one, then the other. He's pretty sure they were on the other side of the house when they joined their shards of family together, but he thinks it felt just like this. "I," he tries, feeling the curve of Stiles' fingers into his palms. "We."

Stiles prompts vulnerably, "Yeah?"

"We all know I'd rather have Scott, but you're an okay consolation prize."

Their hands tighten around each other. "You _can't_ have Scott," Stiles decrees. "I called _dibs_. I called dibs fifteen _years_ ago."

"My dibs have higher rank than yours," says Derek, "he's in my species."

"He's a _true alpha_ ," Stiles corrects. "Like, a _true_ one. You're—what? An ex one? A defector? A goddamn… a fuckin' _expat_?"

Derek nods, smirks down at their hands. "Stop taking it," he repeats, serious again. "I'm pouring it down the sink. Let's revisit this when you can eat poultry again."

Stiles worms his hands free, mutters, "This is an about face." But it's not a refusal. He folds his arms tight across his chest, shoulders hunched, like he's trying to cover up a gut wound. "I'm confused, which is pissing me off."

"I _won't_ ," Derek says vehemently, "hurt you anymore. I don't _fucking care_. We will deal with this as it comes. I _won't_ misunderstand you again."

"Misunder—" Stiles stops, breathes, eyes glancing around at the forest while he thinks. "As it comes," he parrots momentarily. “Okay. I don’t... understand.”

”I want to—”

”No. Derek, I know what you’re saying but I don’t know why.” He tilts his head and squints into Derek’s eyes. “I don’t get your reluctance, if, if you’re willing to change it so quickly...”

”I,” says Derek. “I’m not changing it. I’m—I’m calling a rain check. I,” he aborts a step toward Stiles. “I want you to stop feeling like shit.”

Stiles nods. He looks over at where the worm was. "I want to think about this,” he says. Then he looks back at Derek. “But okay." He takes Derek's hand, starts to trudge up the hill beside him. There's an ease in tension; things are becoming simpler, maybe. "Um, maybe there's, like, a magic IUD sort of thing. You know?"

"What, like Mirena? Where would you even put it?"

"In my mouth? You come in there a lot."

"Jesus christ."

"Just—"

"Stop it—"

"Just jam it right in there—"

"Go away."

::

"Daddy?"

"What, Sam?" Derek yells from the living room.

There is a pause. And then, "Come be here?"

Derek doesn't want to get up. He's just started a book, some Christian romance bullshit Kira lent him that he's supposed to discuss with her and her friend Caroline. The book is the kind with airbrushed white people with perfect hair holding each other on the cover, and the sofa is sucking him deeper and deeper with each glorious second. It's a quiet afternoon, save for a cricket that ended up in the house somehow. It's been drizzling all day, so they haven't bothered wearing shoes, or doing anything of value, really.

But at the same time, Sam doesn't often politely request his presence, and he should probably make sure no one's on fire or something. He heaves himself up, steps around the playpen (the baby rolls onto her stomach), and peeks into the kitchen area.

Sammy's got a whole work station spread out on the kitchen floor, plain sheets of printer paper everywhere and his plastic storage box of crayons and markers tipped on its side, contents poured all over the hardwood. His red, stumpy crayon is poised over a half-finished volcano-looking type blob. He's looking at Derek expectantly.

"What's wrong?"

"Come being in here?" Sam asks earnestly.

Derek doesn't know where this kid gets his syntax choices from. Somewhere in his life, between all the people he spends time with and all the media he consumes, there is a bad influence making him talk like English is his second language. Derek should probably be more proactive about finding out what it is, but as Stiles often says, _eh_. They know what he means. "I'm in here," Derek tells him. "What's wrong?"

"Daddy drawing a pitcher today," says Sam, chin doubling as he peers down at his setup.

Oh. Derek glances longingly at his book. Darcy's standing up in her playpen, and chucks a stuffed elephant so it bounces pointlessly off the muted tv. "I don't know if there's enough room for me," he wheedles, peering back at Sam.

Sam looks calculatingly at the space he's chosen, between the dick table and the big, wooden hutch in which they keep an extra set of plates and the coffeemaker. "Yeah, there's room," he concludes.

"But I don't know _how_ to draw."

"Yeah, you're draw," Sam frowns. "Wif me." He selects an unused piece of paper and proffers it. After a pause, he modifies: "Today."

How can Derek resist that? That unnecessary specification of what day he wants it done? Sighing, Derek abandons his plans for the afternoon and sinks onto the floor, a place he hasn't willingly sat in years. "What should I draw?"

Sam considers this. Then he returns to his own drawing. "Make it a baby ducky!" he squeals, ostensibly to himself. But Derek is present, which means it's probably also for him.

"A baby ducky," he repeats uncomfortably. The crayon feels foreign and too small and too thin in his hand. "Okay."

He spends roughly twenty minutes drawing this baby ducky on the kitchen floor. Several feet away, Sam storms busily through his own artistic process. He seems to have some plan, some idea of where he's going with this series—he finishes the volcanoblob and immediately switches to a new piece of paper. Sometimes he spends five minutes carefully cultivating a drawing, and others only take a few seconds of a thick, clumsy purple line before he's flinging it aside and starting anew. Occasionally he checks up on Derek: "Daddy, you drawing pitcher?" and, once he's reaffirmed Derek is, in fact, drawing a picture, he returns, appeased, to his own work.

Derek keeps an eye on to the baby, who's still in the living room chewing on Derek's keys, but otherwise works diligently on his duck. It's hard; Derek's never considered himself an artist.

Finally, the door thumps and then creaks open, the sound of Stiles returning home. Sam abandons his drawing, letting go of his crayon without a thought as to where it'll end up, and whirls past Derek with inhuman speed. "Papa," he's crowing, "Papa, baloney today!"

"You ate _baloney_ today?"

"No!"

Derek's not sure why he doesn't get up off the floor. It's uncomfortable and he's embarrassed, so it would stand to reason he _should_ get up off the floor. But he does not. He listens to Stiles scoop Darcy out of the playpen and say, "Hey, kid!" ("Snoob," it sounds like she replies) and he listens to Sam chatter at Stiles about something to do with grass and his potty chair, and he waits to be discovered on the kitchen floor.

Stiles stops short when he sees him. He's wearing these horrible, beat up leather loafers that he picked up to wear to a wedding some four, five years ago and then rediscovered in the closet last month. These combined with his wrinkled khakis and lumpy sweater vest make him look like an awful elementary school principal with a porno mouth and a baby on his hip. Stiles still looks a little bit pale, fairly tired, but he's standing a little taller. Derek sort of wants to put him in a headlock; and also cry, maybe. "What's, um…" Stiles' lips twitch, like he's not sure he's allowed to laugh at this. "What's the deal, here?"

"I'm drawing a duck," Derek tells him flatly.

Stiles grins a little. It looks new and a little unsure. "Show me." It sounds ominous.

"No."

"Lemme see."

" _No_." Derek crumples it.

"No, I wanna _see_."

" _No_."

Stiles starts to lunge at Derek, but Sam gets in the way.

"Papa, _I'm_ draw a _makeup store_." He provides his volcano blob, accidentally tears the corner a little bit yanking it out from under his own foot. Stiles sinks into a crouch, sets the baby down; she crawls away. Derek is profoundly grateful for this distraction. He shifts his own drawing behind his back. "Go inside. Eat it, and buy makeup," Sam is elucidating, pointing at the picture. Stiles hangs on his every word, peering between his little, consternated face and the crinkled mess of red wax. "Put it in a bag today."

" _I_ see," Stiles says, like it's dawning on him. Like suddenly everything makes sense. "A makeup store. How much makeup do you buy?"

Sam takes the paper from Stiles, looks at it himself. Then he turns it once counterclockwise, and hands it back. "Four makeups," he says.

"You're so weird, kid," Stiles tells him lovingly. Sam preens. Derek doesn't think he knows what _weird_ means. He's probably incorrectly defined it through context clues as something akin to _good_ and _sweet_ and _sugar_. Another thing Stiles croons to him. "Did you show your daddy?" Derek squints; he wasn't expecting to be included in the conversation. Stiles tips the drawing Derek's way. It looks about the same sideways as it did rightside-up. "Sammy made us a makeup store."

Stiles waits, and Derek nods. Approves of the makeup store. He's been inside Ulta a few times with friends; he's never seen a volcano in there. "I like it," Derek tells Sam, who has taken it back and is eyeing it with satisfaction that even the goop running out of his nose can't take away.

Stiles prompts Derek, "What'd _you_ make?"

"Mushroom casserole," Derek says vainly.

Stiles won't be deterred. "What did you _draw_?"

"There's rice in the microwave."

"Let's see it. Cough it up, big guy."

The room is quiet. The oven whirrs its convection and Sam's nose whistles. Derek is cornered. Finally, he snatches up his wad of paper and crams it into Stiles' hand. Stiles unfurls it.

There's a moment of silence wherein Derek thinks he might escape unmocked.

Then Stiles explodes: he spends a solid five minutes laughing hysterically. The sound makes the baby screech joyfully from across the kitchen, "Oh! Oh-oh, oh—"; Sam gives a responding scream; somewhere upstairs, the cat excitedly claws at a rug. The noise is deafening. Derek stays present. Finally, Stiles catches his breath, wipes his eyes dry.

"Oh, god, I needed that," he says, still giggling breathlessly. "This is just the best. Look at its _feet_."

Derek doesn't think it's _that_ bad. So he's no Van Gogh. So he's no da Vinci. It is clearly a duck, an unremarkable one at that. But he says nothing. Just stares, dazed by Stiles' laughter.

"Some baby ducky," Sam remembers, touching it with his little finger. "Wack wack."

"Quack, quack," Stiles agrees.

::

" _I_ dunno," Stiles goes on. Derek switches the phone to his other ear, holds it there with his shoulder. Stiles takes a second to chew something. He's almost eating actual lunches again; today it's a cup of yogurt with banana slices, a baggy of salted almonds, and a breadroll. "I guess," he says almost boredly, "I guess I just figured we were _past_ this. It's been—what? A year? Two years?"

"Wait," deadpans Derek. "Rewind. _We_? Are you gossiping with her so often you've forgotten you're not actually an active player in her love life?"

There's a silence while Stiles is probably floundering. Sam appears in the doorway from the kitchen, ignoring Derek for favor of awkwardly pushing a doll stroller full of toys onto the rug. "I'm in _volved_ ," Stiles defends. "Like… peripherally. I'm a sidekick, you know, in her… in her whole…" Derek sets down the sock of Stiles' he's trying to find a match for, watches the kid. He's gone back into the kitchen and retrieved his plastic shopping cart, also full of toys. He's trying to push both of them at the same time, and they keep going in weird directions. There's also an end table that holds the faulty broom closet door shut under the stairs that the stroller in particular keeps bumping into. Derek understands this struggle. "Romantic… arena… thing," Stiles is still saying.

"Hold that thought."

"I'm a side character in her play! Yeah, what's up."

"I'm watching your kid try to push a cart and a stroller at the same time." Sam keeps doggedly at it, but he's going pink with frustration. "It's not working out so good."

"Pics or it didn't happen," says Stiles.

Derek quietly takes his phone down from his ear, takes a picture: Sam switches to pushing the stroller with one hand, and pulling the cart behind him with the other. The cart's wheels catch on the edge of the rug; the whole contraption teeters dangerously. Derek sends Stiles the picture.

"Oh, man," Stiles says momentarily. "Same."

Derek grins a little. Same. Just then, the cart topples over, spilling Sam's stacking rings and his button doll Noby onto the floor. A plastic corn cob skitters across the hardwood. "Oh," says Derek. ("Oh _wah_ ," says the baby from under the coffee table.) After a second of disbelief, Sam sort of crescendos into a cry of anguish. Derek's well and truly used to yelling and crying at this point, but this lacks its typical stomping. There is no anger; just genuine, helpless heartbreak. A loss he's not equipped to handle. He tips his little head back, cries with his eyes shut and the corners of his mouth jutting downwards. Derek's chest aches a little.

"Uh oh," adds Stiles, part wary, part amused, part disappointed the phone call is now over. "Duty calls?"

"Duty weeps," Derek agrees. "I'll call you back."

"Seeya."

Derek tosses his phone unceremoniously to the side and holds out his arms; Sam runs to him. "Did it fall?" Derek asks sympathetically, hauling the hiccoughing kid into his lap.

"It knocked _over_ ," splutters Sam, bewildered. "It go, it goed on the _floor_."

"Yeah, I saw that. It's been a long morning, huh." Sam scrubs his snotty face against Derek's chest, and then pulls back, swipes ineffectually at his eyes with his arm. Derek pushes his hair back. "Has it been a long morning?"

Sam ignores the question; either he can detect the inadvertent condescension, or he's just still focused on his failure. With Stiles' genes making him up, either is possible. "I wanna _both_ ," he whines, peering plaintively at the crash site. "I _wunnit_." He devolves into unintelligible cry-yelling, pointing at it, like he's tattling, like it fell over _at_ him.

"I know," says Derek , rubbing his back instead of upsetting him more by saying he's not making any sense. The stroller is stuffed full of knit lambs and books with spaghetti sauce stains on the pages. There's even a plastic scuba diver wedged into the side upside down. The cart was a satellite stroller. "Sorry," Derek directs at Sam's ruddy face.

"Make it _go_ ," the kid appeals desperately. _There's_ that anger; considering his gene pool, Derek was just biding his time until it surfaced. "Make it _go._ Daddy, I _wunnit_. _I wunnit_!" His grits his little teeth, goes almost purple in the face.

He is way too worked up over this; he needs his attention diverted. "Maybe after naptime," Derek negotiates. By then he'll hopefully have lost interest in the mass toy exodus, anyway. "You wanna try again after naptime?" Derek's made a tactical error, it seems: Sam _loathes_ being reminded of _naps_ at a time like this.

Still, ten minutes later, Derek's back on the phone with Stiles. "I just think it's _her life_ ," he's saying, watching Sam breathe slow and deep, tearstained and unconscious in the laundry basket. The baby's asleep, too, drooling onto Derek's jeans. "If she wants to get back with Jackson, it's not up to you to say she can't. Okay?"

"Not okay," Stiles snaps. "He's literally a _weed_. Thanks, have a good one," he directs at a customer.

"Stiles."

"No, _listen_. He finds someplace pretty and forces himself in there, and kills everything around him in the process." Derek is surprised speechless. That's not bad. "Every time they break up, she spends _months_ punishing herself by dating various flavors of Jackson Lite. I'm not—" Stiles sighs. "Oh, that's… down on the end, on your right, towards the bottom. Feagan and Maynard, blue cover. Sorry. I'm just, I'm not trying to _control_ her. Or whatever. I just…"

"I know, you care," Derek says. "I get that."

"Yeah."

"But we got lucky. She's not gonna get what we have. She needs to find shit on her own."

There is a brief quiet, and then Stiles groans aggressively into the phone. "Why can't she just meet an asshole with pretty eyes and settle down forever? I'm just _saying_ , tried and tested."

" _O_ kay," says Derek dotingly.

"Nine out ten dentists agree that my dating track record is _pristine_."

"All ten dentists don't know you've never dated a human being," says Derek.

"No, they know," Stiles sniffs. "They know. It's, like, dentistry one-oh-one. All right? First lesson at freshman orientation, Stiles lives with three werewolves and it's _great_."

"Go back to work," Derek dismisses. "I'm gonna call Lydia, tell her you hate her new-old boyfriend."

"She _knows_. Dentistry one-oh- _two_. Maybe we'll get more furniture out of it this time, at least," muses Stiles, before he hangs up without a goodbye. Derek glances at the TV, which went black because he paused Judge Judy and left it idle for too long. In the reflection, he realizes he's smiling to himself.

::

"Poppy, _look_!" Sam screams.

"I _see_ you, bud!" Stiles yells back. "You're swimming!"

He's not, actually. He's stuffed into water wings like a pig-in-a-blanket and kicking water all over Scott. But far be it from Derek to shatter his little, pointless baby dreams. "I'm _swinning_!" the kid squeals at Scott.

"Ready?" Scott asks him. Then he throws him at Boyd.

"I ate chicken this morning," Stiles tells Derek. It's too hot to figure out what he's talking about. From Derek's lap, Darcy shows Stiles a rubber fish with horrid, bulging eyes. "Fish!" Stiles narrates. She crams it into her mouth. "Chicken," he redirects at Derek.

"When did you eat chicken this morning?" Derek wonders irritably.

"At like three," says Stiles. "I woke up, and I was _hungry_. I felt _hunger_. So I went into the fridge and ate your Chili's leftovers cold."

Derek slumps a little. "I was gonna eat those for lunch tomorrow," he whines.

"Dude, you're missing my point. I _ate chicken_."

Derek takes him back in. There's a novel pinkness in his cheeks. His baseball cap is turned uselessly backwards, and it looks good on him, healthy and tousled. A glimpse of the Stiles Derek locked down some three years ago. "And you're feeling okay?" He reaches out, grabs Stiles' face, like he's gonna examine him. Stiles happily lets him move his head a little.

"Ask me how many times I've barfed my guts up today."

"I'm not gonna do that."

"Ask me."

"No."

"Come on."

"I will not."

"You wanna know."

"I actually don't care. I'm taking the kids and Scott. We're leaving you here."

(Across the shallow end, Scott gives Derek a Look before he receives a soaring Verny and there's water everywhere.)

"I'll just call 911 and ask for my dad. You _prick_."

The baby drops her fish into the water, and then screeches, horrified. Derek retrieves it for her. It goes straight into her mouth. "How many times have you barfed your guts up today."

Stiles beams at him. He has the most beautiful eyes Derek's ever seen. Derek represses the urge to shove him into the pool. "Zero," Stiles says. "That's how many times. It only took me a week and a half to get over that shit Deaton gave me."

Derek looks back out at the pool, the sun glistening blindingly off the moving surface of it. He sees a few band-aids floating among the brilliance. Then he looks back at Stiles. Reaches out and touches his leg hair. "I kinda wanna do you tonight," Derek muses.

He can _taste_ the change in Stiles' mood, the way you can taste the smoke when someone's cooking outdoors. Stiles swallows. "Um," he says a little huskily. "Sup… suppose a child resulted from this union."

Derek nods. Thinks for a long minute. Darcy flings her awful fish a few feet away. Allison, wading by, returns it to her. "If that happened," Derek says slowly, watching Allison's messy french braid. She waves playfully to Lydia, who's in a lounge chair off to the side. Lydia's wearing a hilariously attractive white bikini and huge sunglasses, peering out from under the brim of her hat and watching Scott be a playground. From a third-party perspective, Derek guesses he does look pretty good. He looks back at Stiles, who somehow looks even better, pink and sweaty and out of shape as he is. "Maybe… you work part time. And be home more. Money… isn't really an issue, if you don't want it to be."

Stiles blinks, mostly expressionless. They've discussed the Hale money before; Stiles knows how Derek feels about using it. Derek knows how Stiles feels about using it. That it's on the table right now is cause for much consideration.

"Or _I_ could find something," Derek shrugs, occupying himself with rearranging Darcy's curls, damp and clinging to her lumpy baby head in weird places.

Stiles snorts. That's not the reaction Derek was expecting. "Sorry," Stiles grins. "I was just, I just pictured you in a Wendy's visor. It was…"

"I'm gonna scalp you," Derek replies calmly.

"I could also probably train you at my place," Stiles offers. Derek raises an eyebrow. There's an idea. "Just, we have _options_ ," adds Stiles, "if you… I mean…" He swallows. "Are you really… thinking about this?"

"I didn't realize how important to you it was," says Derek simply, fixing the fallen strap on Darcy's swimsuit. She flops her whole body and keens until he dips her feet into the water; then she gasps excitedly and kicks up some impotent little splashes. "So I reassessed my dealbreakers. New deal."

Stiles stares at him, something desperately hopeful glowing in his eyes; he's too emotional to make an FDR joke. He looks at Derek long enough that Derek starts to get agitated.

"I mean, if you want me to go back to being unaware of your needs, then by all _means_ —"

"I just," Stiles interrupts, "can't believe I get to have you." Derek squirms, childishly. "If you don't want more," he goes on, "I can live with it. It just, it just felt like—you thought I was stupid and—and shitty for wanting it. And then I thought, I dunno. Maybe I was."

"You're not," Derek promises. "I was, I'm—" He looks around the pool. There are children everywhere, and if he didn't have Stiles beside him, he'd be shutting down. "Anxious," he says, and then shuts his eyes, because it sounds so stupid when he says it out loud. "Dealing, with—alone."

Nearby, Scott gets water up his nose and coughs a bunch while Verny yells, "Again!"

"Oh," Stiles breathes. "Why didn't you _say_ so? If you want me home more—"

"I _did_ —"

"Well, but it sounded like—it sounded just like, _oh, you should take a vacation_. It didn't," Stiles gesticulates meaninglessly, "it didn't seem like, _please rescue me_."

"That's not what I said," Derek mutters. Darcy's claws are out and she's puncturing the fish.

"But it's what you _meant_ ," Stiles urges, "and I wish you'd _said_. I didn't know you felt like I was just handing you responsibility. I want to do this _with_ you." They look at each other. Then some stupid kid accidentally catches Derek's shoulder with a water gun.

"So I just," adds Stiles, haltingly, while Derek scrubs the water off his skin, "it just, I'm g—I'm glad. That we talked. I guess. And stuff."

"And stuff," Derek parrots hoarsely.

"You," Stiles says, "should _definitely_ do me tonight, Mister President." Hot behind the ears, Derek self-consciously glances around. Lydia's still watching Scott. "Scotty?" Scott turns, grins. Bounds through the water at them.

It takes him a while, but finally he arrives, shakes sopping wet bangs out of his eyes and puts his hands on his hips, looking like a brown, tattooed Poseidon. Lowriding swim trunks and rivulets of water. For all anyone knows, Derek thinks inanely, Poseidon looks exactly like Scott McCall. "What's up?" he fires his motherly concern at the both of them.

"Can you host a toddler sleepover tonight?" Stiles asks, and then explains almost formally: "Me and this jerk need some alone time."

"Ew," says Scott when Derek just nods soberly, but his eyes are doing that thing. That Scott thing. "We can make sundaes."

"Well, that sounds better than what _we_ were gonna do," Stiles realizes, peering at Derek with his eyebrows up.

"Too bad," says Scott, grinning full tilt sun flare madness at them. "You're _not invited_." As he turns away to return to the toddler throwing match, he waves happily at Lydia. She lifts her hand a second too late.

::

Stiles breathes out a desperate _ah_ sound; the ball of his foot grinds into the sheets, searching for purchase. Stiles' mouth is open, his eyes squeezed shut as he moves, slow and needy, on Derek's cock. His thighs are soft and his knees damp with sweat where they're clinging to Derek's middle.

Derek drags his palms down Stiles' back, his lips along his pulse point. Every nerve ending in his body is on high alert; he can _feel_ his eyelashes brushing Stiles' cheek. There's something dangerous building in his gut, borne somewhere in the heat Stiles is pulling relentlessly out of him.

"Hey," Stiles gasps, and then pushes heavy arms around Derek's neck. "Uh…"

"Yeah," says Derek meaninglessly. He watches Stiles' head tilt back; if Derek believed in a god, he'd thank it for Stiles' throat, the sharp and graceful line of it.

"Can, can you…" He trails off, brows furrowing. Derek hums, questioning, hands tightening on his rib cage. "Never mind," Stiles breathes, smirking, "you did it." Okay. The lamp on the bedside table is on, but Stiles' shirt somehow ended up tossed over it. The room's dimly lit, sort of burgundy tinted. Stiles looks, heavy-lidded, at Derek. Oh.

"I'm gonna come," Derek grinds out.

Stiles' mouth tics up on one side, showing a ruthless little bit of teeth. "Isn't that the point," he wonders. His voice is gravelly, and gives Derek a shudder.

"Um, yeah. Definitely coming."

Stiles rolls his whole body, shoving himself on Derek's dick and dropping their foreheads together in one move. His knee digs into the pillow beside them; "I want you," he hisses, "to come inside me."

"Oh."

"Do it."

"Okay."

" _Do_ it."

"I _am_ , holy _shit_. You are so," Derek shoves roughly up into him, almost knocking him off balance, "damn _impatient_."

"You'd think you'd have noticed that before now," Stiles mutters, and then, higher— "Mm, kiss me?"

Derek means to, he really does; he gets as far as mouthing at the corner of Stiles' lips, and then the orgasm crawls viciously up him too quickly to get any quality kissing done. It twists him up, makes his fangs drop and his knees quake. When it releases him from its grip, he falls, gasping, back against the pillows.

Stiles is propping himself up: his hot palms are braced on Derek's stomach. "I love feeling that happen," he whispers, almost to himself.

Derek grabs sort of loosely at his sides, feels him jolt and shiver. "You're trembling," he says, nudges up into him a little.

"Uh," Stiles twitches to one side. Then, inexplicably, he starts chuckling to himself. Derek gawks, goes still. "Aha… No, don't stop, _hey_ —"

"You're laughing."

"Sorry, I'm not—it's not you, I was just, I was just remembering that drawing."

"What?"

"The one you—on the floor." He snorts.

Derek's annoyed. " _Really_?" he demands. He's still buzzing all over with orgasm, or it'd have a little more heat in it.

Stiles beams down at him, joyous, and Derek's struck with how beautiful he is, and how—how just the relief of having this back is staggering. Haunting. "It just," Stiles is giggling, "just, its _feet_ were—" Derek fucks into him again. The stimulation is almost too much, but he's gonna make Stiles come if it's the last thing he does. " _Oh_ , um—"

"I worked _really hard_ on that duck," growls Derek, giving it to him at a unremitting and punishing tempo now; Stiles' eyebrows are climbing urgently upward.

"Oh, it was _so good_ , dude," Stiles promises, a shit-eating grin spreading on his face. "It was a really—mn, great—"

"I love you," Derek informs him. A quick breath startles out of Stiles. "Get it?"

"Um, I'm be—beginning to." He screws his eyes shut and— "Oh— _fuck_ ," he takes in a sharp breath, tightens his grip on Derek, and comes so hard he _wails_.

::

"You're not allowed to judge me if I cry," Stiles tells him sometime after round two, voice breaking in a couple places. "You're not."

"I'm not."

"Don't _do_ it."

"I'm _not_."

"I _mean_ it."

"Shut _up_ , holy shit." Derek cups Stiles' face in his hands, kisses him with everything he knows how to give. Eventually, he pulls back, looks at Stiles' mouth.

"You told me to shut up," says Stiles.

"I did," Derek agrees.

"I want a divorce."

Never has a blip in a heartbeat sounded so great.

::

"How'd it go?" Derek asks late the next morning, lifting a crotchety, poorly rested Sam into his arms. The tables have turned.

"I could ask you the same thing," Scott says wryly, but doesn't bother waiting for a response. That's what Derek likes about him: he's just easy to deal with. Scott scratches his head thoughtfully. "Um, well? He flushed my seven hundred dollar camera in the toilet, but…" Derek goggles. "I mean, we had fun making sundaes, and he kissed my cheek, so."

"Really?" Derek thinks about dropping the kid, but he's octopus-clinging to Derek, face in his neck. "That was worth seven hundred dollars to you."

"And a pencil," Scott shrugs. A half smile worms its way onto his face. Derek has an impulse to hug him.

Instead, "Yeah, I'll write you a cheque later," he heads to his car to go home.

Derek wishes he could text Laura about all this; she'd probably tell him to replace Scott's pencil, too.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Derek wouldn't drop him. That was a joke.


	22. fastest thing alive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The world is scary, my child says a lot but doesn't speak English, and more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mmbetp how you are spend your saturday nights.  
> MMMwrite the fanfiction.  
> mmmmmmstoppit.

Monica and Boyd's new townhouse is pretty, spacious, two-story. Because their last place was a cramped apartment, it seems empty, even with all their stuff in it. Luckily, Derek and Scott brought IKEA furniture. "What does 'BESTÅ' even mean," Boyd wonders.

"That's not where you put that," Derek replies, reaching for the little tool thing. Boyd lazily pushes Derek's hand away, so Derek just sits back and pouts.

Across the living room, Darcy has pulled herself up by the rungs on a chair, and is slowly travelling across the carpet in this fashion: chair to box to chair to coffee table. Down the hall, Monica and her sister are shrieking and chasing each other with paintbrushes; Derek can't think of anything less interesting than that. He tunes in to the kitchen, where Stiles is saying, "So do you want grape or strawberry, Vern? It's your sandwich, it's up to you. You're the boss, applesauce. Take responsibility."

"Sponsility," Verny replies decisively.

Stiles says, "That's not a flavor. No, wait."

"Oh, I get it," Boyd says, and Derek snaps back to the present. Boyd is tipping his unfinished storage container onto its side. "It goes the other—this is backwards. Or—"

"I _told_ you," contributes Derek shittily. "It says in the d—the dir…" He trails off, because his daughter has abandoned the chair she was hanging on, and is walking casually past him. "The duh… Stiles. Stiles?"

Darcy continues through the archway into the kitchen. "What, dude?" Stiles yells. "I'm in the middle of… oh."

"Dartsy's _walking_ ," Samuel tattles angrily. "She's a _baby_."

"Oh, god," says Stiles. Derek hears a butter knife clatter onto the formica countertop. "This is—this is too soon. I'm not _ready_ for you to be walking!"

"You're a _baby_ ," Sam informs her.

"Sam, don't _push_ her, what're you doing— _Vern_! _Stop_ that! What—"

The funny thing is that after she falls over, she just gets back up again. She always gets back up again. She's like a Weeble. She always gets back up again.

::

Derek steps out of his office, hanging onto the doorknob. Stiles is sitting on the top step of the staircase just outside the door with a plastic lime green bubble pipe clenched in his teeth. The kid is hopping up and down the stairs on all fours like a goat. "What's up?" Stiles asks, craning around to peer up at Derek; at the S and P sounds, bubbles burst out of the pipe. Derek doesn't have the heart to crush his good mood. "Nothing," he says. Then he feels shitty for lying.

Thankfully, he married a Stilinski, so even if he keeps lying, he'll have roughly five million more chances to 'fess up. Stiles narrows his eyes, somehow looking shrewd even with that stupid thing in his mouth. He takes it out. "What's nothing?" he asks suspiciously.

Derek flattens his mouth. Then he says, "Just, a kid was kidnapped down in the San Joaquin valley last night."

"Oh?" Too abstract. Stiles isn't processing it.

"A werewolf kid," Derek extrapolates. "One of my cousin's kid's friends." He's seen _pictures_ of her before.

This time Stiles goes white. Ever since procreating, Stiles has a gaping, bleeding soft spot for werewolf children, but even this is more of a reaction than Derek was expecting. Then he swallows, says hoarsely, "That makes four this summer." Derek blinks; he hadn't known that. "I was looking into it a couple weeks ago," Stiles goes on, frowning at the floor. "I found out that kid from Fresno was a wolf. Then there was that kid in Riverside, a _nanaue_ of all things, still a shifter. And then the one in, uh…" Stiles shuts his eyes, snaps his fingers once, twice, three times, "Crescent City." Points at Derek. The muted triumph from the word recall just adds to Stiles' momentum. "Remember? The one from the news, he was grabbed on his way to school? That kid was a Pham."

Derek knows of the Phams, but—he squints. "I thought his name was—"

"On his mom's side," Stiles interrupts. Then he bites his lip, eyes far off again. "Riverside, San Joaquin, Del Norte. Shapeshifter kids. Three's a pattern," he says more or less to himself. "Four's—"

"Don't," Derek hears himself say, panicked. "Please."

" _I_ didn't do this," says Stiles, bristling. Back in the present. "In case you've _forgotten_ ," he adds acidly, "we have two people of the victims' demographic in our house _alone_."

"You think I don't _know that_?" Derek hisses, trying not to snap too loudly or he'll upset aforementioned werewolf children. "Why can't you just lay low?"

"Papa," Sam yells. He's been yelling for a while now, but they've been ignoring him. This time Stiles looks. "Look." He jumps.

"I see that," Stiles tells him. "That's awesome, dude." Appeased, Sam returns to scuttling around on the stairs. They both pause, watching. "I don't know how else to keep them safe," Stiles says, then, to Derek. Eyes still on their kid. "I can't just lie low and wait for it to happen to us."

"Fine, but—"

"This is how I _protect them_ ," Stiles urges, looking up at him. "This is how I protect _you_. My dad—" Was a detective for most of Stiles' childhood, Derek knows that. He must have grown up being told his dad was out protecting people, fighting crime, saving the world. "—he can help."

Derek stares at him. Stiles is already pulling out his phone, fumbling it into his lap, and then texting furiously, muttering to himself, "Records, other—hm. Scott, too, he can, he'll—yeah." Derek closes his office door, lowers himself down onto the step beside Stiles. Stiles absently drops a heavy hand onto Derek's knee and squeezes, no finesse. When he finally looks back at Derek, his expression is hard, determined. "I _will_ _not_ let it happen to us," he tells Derek firmly, low, and Derek maybe falls in love with him again.

::

In the middle of the night, Derek jerks awake to a whining toddler down the hall. He's addled with sleep and doesn't even have the comprehension to be confused, let alone panicked, but he does listen until he hears Stiles head into her room. "What's the issue?" he asks her. "Concerned about your mortgage? Identity theft, that kinda thing?"

She only gives a very short hissy fit in response, rattling her crib and stamping her clothed feet against the blankets: the Darcy equivalent of Sam's sadness.

"Aw, chill out," Stiles says affectionately. "You wanna come downstairs with me?"

"Nyeah," she says unhappily.

"Since you're up already," adds Stiles magnanimously, and then makes his didn't-you-used-to-weigh-like-six-pounds-or-something grunt, lifting her out of her pointless crib.

"Cake," she replies. Voice scratchy. Derek rolls onto his back, listens to them pass the bedroom door on their way to the stairs. "Kate. Cape."

When Derek finally summons the sea legs to pad out of his room and peer into the living room downstairs, Stiles is strewn across the couch, drowsily watching TV with her cuddled up against his chest, the blue blanket tucked tightly around her. Her face is buried in Stiles' neck to the point where Derek's not sure how or if she's breathing, but Stiles doesn't seem concerned, so she must be managing fine.

Derek watches silently for a long moment, minutes maybe. Stiles occasionally rubs his cheek against her matted curls, something he probably picked up from seeing Derek do it. Or maybe he just likes it.

She turns in his arms, tucks her head up under his jaw. Flexes her little claws, resting harmlessly against Stiles' skin.

Derek can't really move, he realizes.

Darcy's as much an enigma as Sam was, and is, and will be; everything she says comes out sounding a little bit like a complaint, like a little whine. Her hair's always smashed on one side, no matter how hard Derek tries to comb it into actual hair. She's already excellent at walking, still a knock-kneed toddle to it, but silent and quick. She _materializes_ places, you'll turn around in the kitchen and there she is, standing exactly where you're trying to walk, staring up at you like she caught you stealing something from her.

"Crap!" Stiles will bellow when she catches him off guard like that, maybe fling something across the room out of plain shock. Momentarily, he'll ask her, "Did you _have_ to inherit that particular attribute of his?" which makes Derek a little defensive, but whatever.

She's become more domineering since learning to walk, too; she doesn't bother with asking for things, now that she's learned she can get it herself. If it's too high up for her, she just grunts and points at it, dispenses with manners and pleasantries. She's a kid who gets to the point, and Derek likes that about her. (Stiles' frustration is Derek's laziness with the whole _use your words_ thing. Can he help it if he respects her disinterest in social rules? He knows he should stick to it better, like he did with Sam.)

And still with the oral fixation. She's got an array of acceptable pacifiers; she prefers the Nuk ones, but she will accept Chicco in a pinch. Stiles has taken to wearing this weird, black silicone bracelet, so that he doesn't have to carry her normal teethers around—an understandable concern, seeing as she will go nowhere and do nothing without something to suck or chew on. If it's not a pacifier, it's your watch. If it's not your watch, it's Sam's wooden helicopter ("No! Das _not yours_ , peas!"). If it's not that, it's one of her thousands of variably decorated and sized toys. A set of brilliantly colored keys ("House key, car key, and the office?" the sheriff will ask her amicably, puzzling over her impossible hair), a rubber giraffe that makes a heinous squealing noise when you pinch its middle, and Stiles' favorite—a silicone Batman symbol. Someone also bought her a plush monkey with weird things attached to all its limbs, but she hates that thing, and so does Derek.

She windmills her fat arms when you show her one of these objects of hers, even if she's already got one in her mouth. Once she has them, she shows them to everyone around her, pops them out of her mouth and proffers them, oozing spit spindling down onto her knee like spider-silk, only grosser. "Awesome," Stiles will tell her, and she will stuff it violently back into her mouth. "Das _wet_ ," Sam will tell her, and she will pelt him with it.

Her first word was "Duh," in reference to Derek, which Stiles found _absolutely hysterical_. From there she graduated to "Pom," meaning Stiles, and "App!" meaning Sam, usually shouted with a pointed finger. And finally, " _No_ ," meaning _everything_.

She doesn't have many more words than that; she is a woman of _action_. She gesticulates wildly to indicate what she's trying to say, because she realized quickly that her mimicry of speech yielded little to no results. She flops to the side like a ragdoll whenever Derek dresses her, dead weight. She spends all her time at home with protruding canines and little claws. She moves around like a funeral procession, solemn, determined, but occasionally she will stop and turn, just to make sure Derek is watching. He often is.

In the end, her mobility isn't nearly as terrible as Derek had feared. So she can now take his glasses and put them in the toilet. So what? Derek's had worse. He's had far worse than toilet glasses. If toilet glasses is the price he has to pay in order to witness this miracle that is his occasionally shit-coated child learning, then he will pay it. He can live with toilet glasses. It will serve as a reminder to put the seat down.

That part about the baby gate, though, that was legit. Derek nods somberly to himself while he hammers the side of a discarded crib into the wall and the handrail. He and Stiles will just have to high-step over the thing until she stops getting up in the night.

::

"Poppy, wudder you doing?" Sam wonders. He can't really see over the countertop, so he's on his knees on the master bathroom toilet seat, touching the toilet paper roll thoughtfully. The cat's up on the bathroom counter, sniffing irritably at the can of Barbasol.

"Shaving," says Stiles amicably. "Well, I'm done shaving. I shaved."

"What _shazing_ is."

Stiles wipes his face off with a hand towel. Derek suddenly has a vivid memory of sitting on a plush pink rug in that exact bathroom, watching _his_ dad shave. " _Shaving_ , with a _V_ sound," Stiles is telling Samuel. "It means takin' all the hair off my face. See?"

"Why?"

"Because your daddy thinks I look better this way." Stiles leans back to glow at Derek through the bathroom door. Derek grunts from his pillow nest. "What do _you_ think?" he directs at Sam. Hands tossed out, like, _appraise me_.

Sam considers this. He slaps the toilet paper roll. Then, "You look like a hedzhog."

"A _hedgehog_ ," Stiles repeats, thrown a little.

"Yeah." Then, inspired, "You, _you_ , Papa? _You_ look?" He deflates again, casual. "You look like a hedzhog."

"Well…" Stiles can roll with this. "Hedgehogs are cool. Right?"

Sam doesn't clarify. He climbs down from the toilet and leaves the room. It's quiet for a long time, while Stiles mulls this over and cleans up his shaving cream. Derek's perplexed when Stiles leaves the bathroom and climbs back into bed, smelling excellent. "Mmwudyerdoing," Derek articulates, rolling toward where he thinks Stiles might be. His brain's relatively online; the rest of him just hasn't caught up yet. Stiles' waking up process is roughly the exact opposite.

"It's my hair, right?" Stiles asks. _God_ , he smells good. Like various soaps and lotions and Speedstick. Derek worms his way closer. "It sticks up, right? That's what he means?"

"Hm? No." He didn't mean _anything_ , Derek wants to tell Stiles. He's an idiot. He wants Ella Fitzgerald for Christmas. He thinks goldfish crackers are pretty. "Dis… disregard."

"This is always a sight to see," Stiles remarks. "It's like you're still asleep. Are you? Are you even awake right now?"

"Yes."

" _Are_ you, though? Are you _really_."

" _Yes_. Holy shit." What day is it? Isn't Stiles going to work today? "Go _'way_."

"I can't, actually, if you're hanging on me." _Is_ Derek hanging on him? He is, a little bit. Stiles just smells really good, that's all. And he's warm. And he sighs. "A _hedgehog_?"

"Shut _up_ ," Derek says, muffled, in the front of Stiles' white t-shirt. "He's a _baby_." And, if Derek's ears don't deceive him, he's talking to himself in his room. Should they really put any stock in the opinions of someone who talks to himself about going to the bathroom?

"He's just being honest," says Stiles, a little defensively.

"He's never _seen_ a hedgehog."

A pause. "Hasn't he?"

"An' one time—" Derek yawns. "One time he, he said he was 'the color of America.'" Derek gives this phrase half-assed air quotes, because it is a direct quotation.

Stiles coughs a little. "Like—like right _then_? Like he was dr—"

"No. In general."

That makes him laugh. Good. Better that than a pointless spiral into self doubt over a comment made by a toddler. For what it's worth, Derek thinks, dragging Stiles down to cuddle for a while, Stiles _does_ look kind of like a hedgehog. But like, if a hedgehog became a person. Especially with his hair buzzed short, like it was last year. His nose is little and pointy and he's got clingy fingers. Get him in a pool and the first thing he does is float on his back until he starts to feel his skin burning. Stiles doesn't need to know that. He does need to keep petting Derek's hair. That's nice.

He has to stop doing that when they hear a kid break something, but it was nice while it lasted, and Derek thinks so much about the way Stiles smells that he needs to jerk off during naptime.

::

Since Sam started talking, Stiles' interest in golf waned somewhat, to Derek's relief. It's not that there's anything particularly wrong with golf, aside from how stupid and boring and impossibly rich it is—Derek's not a fan.

But as opposed to her brother, Zdzisława enables this hobby of his. Their one-on-one time is Stiles camped out on the couch, Darcy in his lap, some kind of ridiculous golf tournament on the TV. She's silent, frowning, as the player prepares to swing. She blinks excitedly when the club hits the ball. The camera zooms in on the ball in the air, and "Baw," she announces, exhilarated.

"Golf ball," Stiles agrees. "It's in the air. Watch—" The ball lands, rolls around for a bit.

"Baw," says Darcy.

"The ball is on the ground," replies Stiles. "Nice. Good setup for a birdy."

"Pom," Darcy continues, addressing Stiles. She turns in his lap to explain further: a monologue that sounds like Latin. It's entirely gibberish, but the word _ball_ shows up more than once. _Baw_ this, and _baw_ that. Maybe she's describing the rules to golf, what does Derek know. She finishes, and pauses. When she doesn't get a response, she says, "Sip it."

"Will do, sport," Stiles replies. She continues watching him, so he reaches up and musses her hair.

" _Stop_ ," says Derek from the basement doorway; "Seriously?" He just combed her headmess under an hour ago. She turns to see where the words came from, spots Derek, and smiles politely. Points at him like a greeting. Derek points sternly back.

Stiles smoothes her hair flat, but it's all tangly now. "Sorry, bud," he says, one hand tossed listlessly into the air. Like it just couldn't be helped. "Life is full of surprises."

"You're full of something," Derek mutters, turning to head back to the basement.

"Pom it's _eat_ skulls," he hears Darcy tell Stiles happily.

::

There's a knock on the door mid-afternoon. Derek's elbow deep in suds, trying to wash everything on earth off a baby; he briefly considers scrubbing his arms dry and answering the door anyway, but lifting them from the water reveals how much work that will be. "Stiles," he grunts, peering at his intensely bubbly limbs.

"Got it," Stiles yells back.

"Papa's getting the door," Derek informs Darcy, submerging his arms grumpily.

"Stopes," she yells.

"Soaps," Derek replies; that's the most relevant thing he can think of.

Over the sound of shallow splashing and babytalk, he hears a tearful voice, and leans back to listen. It says, "What're you doing here."

"I'm on a sabbatical," says Stiles. "C'mere, what's wrong? Are you okay?"

" _Fine_. I just came to—I just came to—"

"To talk to Derek?"

"Yeah, I guess. I thought maybe—maybe he wanted help cooking, or—something."

Is that _Erica_? Derek very rarely hears Erica sounding like that. He shoots the baby a panicked look; she doesn't notice. She's just discovered that if she pushes her rubber apple to the bottom of the tub, it'll bob back up to the surface.

"He's upstairs covered in bubbles," Stiles says. "But I have something you could help _me_ with."

"What."

"I'm _super cold_. I could _really use_ a hug."

"You're patronizing me," she says. Then she sniffles, and it's muffled.

"See, this is much better," Stiles comments. "Hugging is _great_."

"Shut up," she says.

::

She's a wreck when Derek gets downstairs and sees her on the couch, Stiles' arm across her shoulders. Her mascara is smeared down her face like dripping watercolors; her nose is red and runny; her mouth is swollen from crying. Most noticeable, however, is her hair. It's been chopped off in uneven chunks; last time Derek saw her it was past her waist, and now it's in messy clumps around her jaw.

She reaches imperiously for the baby; the baby reaches back. Derek plunks Darcy, towel and all, in Erica's lap.

"We hugged," Stiles brags. She snorts wetly into the baby's hair.

"Talk to me," says Derek, sitting on the couch on her other side.

"It's nothing," Erica says firmly. "I just freaked out. I'm fine now."

"It's because of the hug," Stiles says.

"Oh, my god," she looks at him incredulously. "It's _nothing_ ," she repeats, to Derek. "Stuff with my m—my mom." They've always had a strained relationship. Derek is pretty sure Erica and her mother have talked to each other without Erica ending up crying for a cumulative two hours Erica's entire life. This, however, is the worst Derek's ever seen her looking, and he's seen her covered in her own blood more than once before. "I think we're done this time," Erica says, occupying herself with Darcy's ridiculous hair. It's still damp; it should be more obedient than it is. Erica's mouth wobbles. "I really think she's done with me."

 _Maybe that's for the best_ , Derek thinks, but doesn't say. Because he's _met_ Erica's mother. Her lips are always pressed into a thin line and there's always something burning in her eyes, not like a smolder but like an effigy. She's sharp and thin, and her front yard is always pristinely manicured. She was wearing pleated khakis with perfect leg creases and a pink sleeveless turtleneck, and her arms were crossed. Erica has the strength to dismantle a brick wall using only her hands, but one withering look from her mother reduces her to an unmoving, silent heap. Needless to say, Derek loathes Ms. Reyes, but he'll be the first to admit he's only met her once and the only things he knows about her are what Erica's confessed while under the influence of cannabis. "What happened?" he asks.

Erica scrubs a palm across her cheek. "I came out."

This comes as a dull sort of surprise to Derek. The first time he fucked a guy, his parents were dead. When Stiles took up with Derek, the sheriff's harshest reaction was frustration that Stiles picked _him_. He's never thought about it, but he's been _lucky_. Fancy that. "Do you want to talk about it?" he hazards, but she's already shaking her head.

"No," she says. "I just wanted… some company." Zdzisława reaches for Derek, pauses, and then averts to Stiles. "And a haircut, maybe," Erica finishes.

Derek takes her to the fancy salon Lydia goes to. She gets her nails done, too, while Derek sits near her and reads an US Weekly. Derek never does find out why she cut her hair off, but it turns out to suit her really nicely. She has the kind of neck you show off, if it's not creepy for Derek to point out. It might be, so he doesn't point it out. After, while she's still smelling of horrid chemicals, he buys her an Orange Julius and hugs her shoulders one-armed.

"Thanks," she says to him. "I know this is weird for you."

He thinks about that for a minute. "Less weird than it used to be," he concludes.

She nods. "I'm getting a puppy."

They go to the pet store that very day.

::

He needs to take the cat to the vet one morning, and it's awkward. He realizes, setting the plastic carrier on the metal table, that he's never seen Dr. Deaton do any actual veterinary work. The doctor scoops the cat out and drags her, tail rigidly between her legs, onto a scale. "How are the kids?" he asks Derek politely.

Derek clears his throat. "Um, they're fine." There's a pause, while Deaton weighs Derek's cat. "They're with Monica and Vernon at McDonald's."

"Monica tells me Vernon hasn't presented any signs of being a werewolf yet," Dr. Deaton tells Derek. "How have her stools been?"

"What?"

"Your cat."

Oh. Derek screws up his eyebrows, trying to remember if there was anything different going on in her litterbox this morning when Stiles cleaned it out. "Um, fine?"

"Drinking plenty of water?"

"Yeah." The normal amount.

"Good." Deaton lifts her tail. She's got her head buried under Derek's arm. "Not all born werewolves present right away. Could happen as late as three or four. In rare cases—" He's preparing a needle. "—the change itself doesn't take place until puberty sets in. But it's possible he's a human."

What a waste that would be. With Boyd's genes in him and Monica's quick sense of humor, that kid would make an excellent wolf someday. Maybe alpha of his own pack. Maybe—Derek gets distracted by the wildly improbable possibility of all three children-so-far in a pack together. He tries to remember if he's ever heard anything about a child alpha, just for kicks while the cat gets a shot and starts growling. Derek pets her absently. It's just sinking in that someday these kids are going to be his age, and he's not sure how he feels about that, what that will even look like.

Derek's seen pictures of himself and of Stiles when they were very young. Stiles' usually include a broad smile and a pair of overalls with a dump truck embroidered on the front pocket. Derek, if he really recalls, was usually looking away from the camera—the norm in their family photos. But Sam has the soft, chubby cheeks Derek did and the patchy pink flush that Stiles did. So Derek can't really imagine what he'll look like as an adul—Deaton's just said something.

"What?" Deaton gives him a soft kind of look. Like, _you've gotten so unaware of your surroundings. You've developed a false sense of safety. Stop projecting your insecurities onto me_. Derek bristles. " _What_?"

"I said, Stiles hasn't been in for more of that concoction I gave him."

Derek nods. "It made him really sick." He pauses. "He hated it."

"I thought he might," says Deaton to Derek's cat's collar, forcing a little tag onto it with the bell. "Whether or not it made him sick." Great. Even _Deaton_ — "There are alternatives," Dr. Deaton continues, one eyebrow up. He pushes the cat back across the table to Derek and she hisses. "I was surprised when he never asked for one. Did you change your mind about that?"

"Not necessarily," Derek hedges. He doesn't need to cram the cat back into the carrier; the second he's opened the little door she's sauntering back in, ego heinously bruised. Derek fusses with the latch on the carrier for a minute while Deaton pulls his gloves off. "What were the alternatives?"

Deaton returns to him, brightly. "Well. I've got something my colleagues down in Honduras recommended, it's a topical solution. I'd have to charge you for that, just because I'd need to ship it in from there. There's also some spells you could try, verbal with some physical channeling, but I've never seen them used so I can't guarantee results. Now—" He leans one elbow on his desk, gestures with the other: Derek's never seen him this animated. He must not get much chance to talk about this sort of thing. "—belief and confidence is always an integral part of performing any kind of magic, but I mostly tell that to Stiles because it's not in his blood, so he absolutely needs that help. However. If his friend Lydia were to help, they would have much better chances of success."

He pauses, watches Derek consider this. His cat's started whining in the carrier again. Derek pokes a finger through the bars and she turns her back on it. Derek's not sure how he feels about involving Lydia in their contraceptive methods, however much more time she's been spending with them since Vernon started talking.

"Just some things to discuss with him, maybe," Deaton finishes.

On the way home, the cat fear-shits in the carrier. She cries until Derek gets her home to wash it off her feet in the tub.

::

One night after the kids pass out, Stiles downs three glasses of wine. "I love you," he tells Derek, nuzzling into him like a weird, sloppy pet. "Verr mush. _So_ mush."

"So mush," Derek agrees.

"I'm kiss you now," says Stiles. He does, and he tastes like fruit. Somehow when he's drunk he kisses just as well as when he's sober; Derek's experiences in college makes that an impressive discovery. More than just as well, Stiles kisses with a reckless abandon, a sharp drive that makes Derek feel a little drunk himself, like if he doesn't hang on to something he'll fall facefirst into a canyon. He gets a little residual panic, plucks Stiles off of himself like the cat off the backside of the easy chair. Stiles hangs there, mouth still in a confused moue, like he's not sure what happened in between the kissing and the not kissing.

"Slow down," Derek tells him hoarsely.

"Way slower," Stiles agrees. "Where's—are you okay?"

Derek looks helplessly down. "You make me forget where I am."

"In our house," Stiles reminds him, but he sits back obligingly. He waits while Derek catches his breath. Derek only feels calm once he can hear the silent house ringing in his ears again.

Finally, he takes Stiles' hand, drags him up and off the couch. "Come on," he says. "Bed." Like a normal couple.

" _Ooh_ ," breathes Stiles, "that's a _great_ idea, let's do _that_. Let's get in the _bed_."

"That's the plan."

"Let's do it boring. Le's do it missionary style," says Stiles excitedly, while Derek ushers him roughly up the stairs. Then he stops, turns around to face him. "Missionary Stiles," he adds, proffering his fist to get bumped.

"Shut it, hedgehog," says Derek, and Stiles collapses on the stairs, loses himself in laughter so hard he's not making a sound.

 


	23. emergence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My friend is dating again, my kid is growing again, and more.

"I'm taking action," is the first thing Stiles says when Derek answers his phone. Sure, Derek can talk; with Stiles home in the mornings, he's left with roughly thirty percent more patience these days. Okay, maybe fifteen. Still. He shifts his reusable grocery bag out of the crook of his elbow, hangs it on the handle of the stroller, and leans against a fire hydrant. Sam's thrown himself facedown onto the sidewalk in front of a group of well dressed twenty-somethings, and Derek feels like he should see how this plays out, anyway.

"Are you going on strike about something?" Derek drawls. "No, wait—you're drafting a petition to get a second cat."

"Would it work? Sammy would sign it." Sammy would sign anything. Sammy signed the wall. Sammy signed the antique end table. Sammy signed his own body. Before Derek can even process this, anyhow, Stiles barrels on: "I'm gonna set Lydia up with someone! I'm gonna make her a match! Find her a find!"

There are many questions Derek could select from the cloud in his brain; he asks the more pointless one. "Who are you gonna set her up with that will withstand Jackson ripping their head off their body?" Derek grimaces politely at a shocked woman who passed by him at the exact wrong moment. She shoots him an even more shocked expression once she clocks Sam, who's rolled onto his back and is kicking at the sky for no discernible reason.

"I have a list," says Stiles.

"How many people are on the list."

"So far, three. Isaac, Scott's cousin Gabe—"

Derek nods amicably, for purely his own benefit. "Yeah, Isaac is seeing someone and Gabe is, like, fifty."

"He's forty-seven," Stiles says. "You're ageist. This is ageism."

"Uh huh. Who's the third."

"Oh, Jenna's got this nephew who's, like, twenty-eight or twenty-nine I think. He's into hiking and traveling—ow, fuck. I just bit my tongue. Shit." Sam gets up from the ground and, sniveling, wanders over to Derek. "I dunno, he's _kind_ of a douche, but he seems like her type or whatever. Maybe she'd like him."

"Maybe. If she wouldn't hate being randomly set up." Stiles makes a gloomy noise of assent. They both let a pause settle between them. Derek doesn't know what Stiles is thinking about—he never does, frankly, and a window into that skull of his would probably reveal a lot of confusing things—but Derek's thinking about Lydia. They've developed a weird sort of friendship built on wry pessimism, depressingly undying hope, and shopping, and he's been watching that look in her eyes get more and more frequent, less and less hidden. "She's been…" Derek sighs, irritable. "Sad. Lately."

"If by 'lately' you mean the last, like, two years," Stiles affirms. It's not accusatory; that's approximately the time frame Derek meant. "God, it's already been three years," he digresses, more or less to himself. "He was a newborn, like, _yesterday_." Then he says, "Fine. If Brett's out, you got any other ideas?"

Derek thinks this over while Zdzisława starts to buck and twitch in her stroller like she's being tased. He thinks about when Lydia seems happiest, least bogged down. She spent the weekend once when her water heater was broken, sat on the couch in pink plaid pajama bottoms, holding a glass of Kaella rosé, hair piled messily on top of her head. She watched a romcom and laughed a lot when Derek made shitty comments. Since Verny started talking, she'll come along on outings like to the children's museum or whatever. She once explained the red shift to Sam, and he pretended valiantly to understand ("Yeah. When the stars go, it's away with colors."). Her mother was bringing her new boyfriend on the family trip to St. Barts, so she spent last Christmas with the McCall-Hale-Stilinski reunion tour. On her birthday— "Stiles," Derek says suddenly.

"Mm," Stiles replies, absent.

"Stiles."

"Mhm, what."

Derek's just realized that all of those times had something in common. Someone was present for all of those times, and it adds up all of a sudden. "Don't set her up," he tells Stiles. Stiles makes a very short whine, like he's just had a lollipop taken away. "No, listen. You remember your creepy date-me plans from high school?"

Stiles hums amiably. "I _really_ shouldn't have told you about that."

"True," says Derek. "But I think she's got one of her own. I think she's just—she just needs to work her way around to it."

"I have no idea what you're referring to," Stiles gripes. "Are you suggesting Lydia has a crush on me? Lydia doesn't have crushes. Lydia has targets who submit without complaint." Derek rolls his eyes. The guy still talks like she's some kind of goddess. She seems to enjoy the ego stroking, at least.

"She—"

"Daddy," Samuel appeals, knocking politely on Derek's jeans. "Go home _inneniately_." Better _immediately_ than _now_ , Derek guesses. "Righ _now_." Yeah.

"All right, let's go," says Derek. The kid whines to be picked up. "I only have two hands, Sam. Let's walk, okay?" Denied.

"Why wouldn't she tell me about her crush?" Stiles is complaining meanwhile. "She usually tells me stuff like that. We had a _sleepover_. Why didn't she tell me?"

"Maybe because she's not ready for her crush's best friend to instantaneously spill the beans," Derek suggests drily. "I have to go," he adds. "Your kid doesn't want to walk ever again."

Stiles seems to piece it all together then. "Oh," he breathes. "Oh, my god. I'm so fucking stupid."

"No arguments here."

"Shove it, love guru. Pick up your child. Be present for his emotional needs."

"When you get home today," says Derek calmly, as Sam plops back down on the sidewalk to shed manipulative tears, "all your belongings will be outside and doused in Orange-Glo."

"Mm, love you too, fuckface."

Derek hangs up on him.

"I nuv Daddy," Sam says happily several minutes later, examining Derek's sunglasses while Derek carries him home. "Wareen glasses the _store_."

"That's reassuring," says Derek back. "I think I love _you_." Which is true, albeit inexplicable: Sam hurls the sunglasses into the road.

::

"I'm just going to the bathroom," Stiles tells Darcy.

She doesn't listen; she probably can't hear him over all the wailing she's doing, hanging white-knuckled from the pointless strap on Stiles' carpenter jeans like she's being abandoned in a den of hungry lionesses.

"The bathroom," Stiles says again, mostly unruffled. He points at the bathroom door. "Here I go." She screeches; her claws come out, and then she falls onto her back. Stiles takes this opportunity to escape. "Goin' to pee. 'Bye."

From the bathroom two minutes later, Stiles yells, "'Bye!"

::

It's a chilly afternoon out in the woods northwest from their house. Out in town it's intensely bright and sunny; here, the sun filters lazily through the trees, soft scales of light rustling on the ground, on Derek's jacket sleeves. Last week Samuel broke the sconce in the hallway by the guest room, and Zdzisława screamed and screamed and screamed from pure joy, so it's clear they aren't burning off enough energy outside.

"I wish I had a cigarette," Stiles tells Derek, leaning back against a tree. He looks away from where the kids are digging avidly in the carpet of fallen leaves. "I haven't wanted one since college. It just seems like a nice time for a Newport."

"Maybe you can have one this weekend," Derek suggests.

Stiles resumes watching their spawn. "Nah. It'll have passed by then."

Derek looks up, at the shifting treetops—a leaf flutters down—and then south, in the general direction of the big, stupid, dormant Nematon. The last time he saw the thing it had one thin sapling wedged right in the center of the stump. Stiles suddenly hooks two fingers in Derek's belt loop, pulls roughly. Derek considers resisting, but what for? Stiles is wearing a sweater with stripes on it, awkwardly given to him by Derek for last Christmas, and Derek could be touching it right now. He boxes Stiles in against the tree with hands braced against the bark on either side of him. "What do you want," he says.

"Let's be gross for a sec," Stiles replies.

"You're always gross."

"If you think I won't give you a purple nurple while your traumatized children watch," Stiles tells him, "then you are _sorely_ mistaken, my friend."

Derek lets this threat roll off him. "What kind of gross are we talking here?"

"The grossest kind." Stiles tugs at Derek's shoulders until he hunches in closer, leans his forehead against Stiles'. "Yuck," he sighs.

"What's wrong with you," Derek, as per usual, says more than asks.

"Just," Stiles thumps his head back against the tree. "Boyd and Monica are fighting. Scott and Danae are being weird. Erica just dumped Nona, Kira is single and depressed, don't even _mention_ Lydia and Jackson, and Liam's _still_ not over that one chick—"

" _Liam_?" Derek squints. Who cares about _Liam_?

"Shut up," says Stiles, reddening. "He's _sad_."

Derek knows. Stiles acts like he can't hear Stiles' late night phone conversations. "Okay." Derek braces a forearm against the bark next to Stiles' head. "So what's your point, that we're too tired to be in flux?"

"Yeah, that's it," nods Stiles, somehow barbed and flat at the same time, "I'm asking you to step up your relationship ennui game. _No_."

"Then what."

"I just want—" Stiles rolls his eyes. "I don't know. Seeing them all stressed out and fighting and shit is just—I'm grateful, I guess." He looks up from the ground. "For you. Or something."

"Is this a Thanksgiving special?" Derek drawls. "Is that what this is?"

"Okay, _listen_. If you're just gonna be a dick to me—" Derek cuts him off with a kiss, and maybe it's that Stiles wasn't ready, but it ends up deeper than Derek anticipated. Stiles sighs under Derek's mouth, slips a hand up under his jacket, like if they were alone or if it were warmer, he'd be feeling him up. Derek grips the back of Stiles' neck, and Stiles hums a little—maybe it's a groan. They're too mixed up together for Derek to tell.

He's just thinking about dragging the idiot back inside when suddenly somebody roughly two and a half feet tall crashes into his leg. He and Stiles look down. Sam's tugging urgently on Derek's jeans, looking away: on the bank of the hill under which the kids were digging, there's someone standing in the fog. "No," Sam's saying meanwhile, so hoarse it's almost a squeak, "no, no no, no—"

He's _terrified_. Derek scoops him up, perplexed. It's not like he's never seen someone out here in the woods before. People jog through here all the time, either not knowing or not really caring that it's private property; and Derek doesn't particularly care, either, as long as they don't litter or start a fire. "What," he asks the kid, whose only response is to tuck his face against Derek, muttering protests to no one.

"Sorry," says the person from the hill, no attempt to call across the clearing. She obviously knows Derek can hear her fine. "Didn't mean to frighten your little family."

Jesus christ. Does anybody talk like a normal person anymore? What about being a member of the bigger world causes people to talk like goddamn supervillains all the time? Derek glances at Stiles, but aborts because Stiles clearly can't hear her, and will therefore have no irritable look to share. "S'fine," says Derek, hefting Sammy up higher on his hip; kid's getting heavy. "You need something?"

"Passing through town," she replies. She's started to approach, casually, and when she's a little closer, Derek can see a sheet of long black hair and narrow, dark eyes. "Thought I should introduce myself. I might be here awhile."

"I'm not the one you need to talk to," says Derek, but he awkwardly reaches around Sam to shake her hand. When he steps closer, Sam gives up all pretenses and keens into Derek's shoulder. Derek can feel the prick of little claws: the kid is hanging on for dear life.

The stranger looks at Sam, frowning; Derek doesn't blame her. This is pretty bizarre, for him; usually he greets others like them with the exact same trepidation with which he greets humans. But it's not the first time he's had an utterly disproportionate response to stimuli just _today_. When she leaves and he stops reeking of anxiety, Derek will feel infinitely more sociable. On the ground, Darcy's quietly weaving around his and Stiles' shins, tripping over their feet. "My apologies," says the woman again, watching. "I thought this was Hale territory."

"It is," Derek tells her.

She waits; he doesn't elaborate.

Rolling his eyes, Stiles says, "He's Derek—" Her eyebrows go up in recognition; that's the part of introductions Derek loathes the most. When they hear his name. _Oh, you're the teenage slut that was left behind. Pity_. "—I'm Stiles. Land extends another couple miles down that way before you hit the preserve."

She smiles a little at him. "And you are?"

"Stiles," he says again, brusque. Then, "I married into the family."

"Ah," she says, grinning now.

He folds his arms. "I didn't catch _your_ name?"

She straightens her head; her hair falls, heavy, over one shoulder. "Delilah."

He smirks. "As in, _hey there Delilah_?"

"A- _hah_. Funny."

Stiles just shrugs.

"Well, I should get going," she says then, looking back down at Zdzisława. "Hungry," she adds, as an explanation.

"Yeah, same," Stiles agrees, somehow almost belligerent. His attitude is like a jousting lance. "Guess we'll see you around."

With one final look at Sam, now silent, rigid, trembling, she passes between Stiles and Derek and disappears into the trees. They watch. After a minute, Sam loosens up, starts to whimper pathetically. "Gonna have that stuck in my head all day," Stiles grouses. Then, "Gimme."

Derek passes Sam, claws popping off his t-shirt, over to Stiles ("What's wrong, sugar? Huh?" " _No_."). They head back towards the house—ostensibly to eat, but mostly because the clouds have knitted over the sun and it just seems less safe, now.

::

Samuel's third birthday brings forth a bounty yet unparalleled.

His swingset from last year is small, just one swing on a wooden stand. To the side of it, Scott, Stiles, and the sheriff attach a little playhouse on stilts, with a haphazard brick patio underneath it. Using the short ladder, Sam can climb into the playhouse, turn the pointless yellow steering wheel. He can slide down the metal slide. He could, if he could hold onto it, swing down the tiny zipline. Of course, he does none of those things: he just spends a solid half hour meticulously and carefully climbing up the slide.

On the porch just outside the back door, there is now a small, round table, with four little chairs around it; and, to play with at this table, a little plastic tea set. "They only make them in pink and purple," Kira explains apologetically to Derek, as if Sam could give a rat's ass what color it is.

He receives several more soft-bodied dolls to add to his collection, and a large stuffed alligator. He's given several toy cars and a Brio train set. He gains a hat with two yarn pompoms on the top of it. One of Stiles' second cousins sends him a ridiculous amount of used books, only some of which are age appropriate; Melissa gives him a chunky plastic yellow phone with unpushable rubber buttons, on which he immediately receives a pretend phone call from his aunt Laura. He asks her what her favorite bug is.

He also gets attractive shoes from Lydia, some animated movies "from Verny," and a bright, shiny, red raincoat. A rug, to replace Monica's hand-me-down, long since disposed of for its many accumulated stains. A huge print of Elton John ("Das Elkin. He's a piano."), a couple puzzles, a fifty dollar bill ("I have this sense that you don't understand children as a concept," Stiles tells Jackson sympathetically, and then views a middle finger for his troubles).

("I love all this packaging," Stiles relates to Derek while they're disposing of probably upwards of a hundred boxes. "They've always got some kid about to have a coronary on the box, like, in case you don't know this is supposed to be fun. This guy's my man." He shows Derek the box the plastic phone came in. A little blonde boy is absolutely hysterical over this phone. **Playtime Fun Phone** is in thick white bubble letters beside the kid's head. "Like, relax," says Stiles to the box. "Have a drink of water or something.")

Most daunting, however, is the four-poster twin bed. The sheets, received with it, are blue and white plaid. It will go nicely in Sam's room. "It's a _big_ bed?" Sam asks Stiles that night after a talkative bath, idly driving a tiny metal caboose across his own cheek. The bed isn't set up yet. Its head and foot boards are leaning unassumingly against the wall opposite the dresser, and Samuel's eyeing it unhappily, like it's here to arrest him.

"Yeah," says Stiles, a little melancholy. "For big kids."

"Wubbout _my_ bed?"

"Darcy Bell needs a toddler bed. She's getting too big for the crib."

"Dartsy gets it?"

"Yeah."

They both consider this.

"I don't wunnit," the kid eventually decides. Derek ducks into the room briefly to scoop up tonight's bath towel and a little purple shirt with frosting smeared all over it. "Daddy. Don't wunnit," Sam repeats at Derek.

Derek straightens, laundry basket on his hip, and looks to Stiles. Unimpressed, all _what's your move, slick?_

Stiles palms Samuel's little skull, gives him a wobble. "Don't be so hasty," he tells him. "Your granddad put a lot of thought into that present."

"No," says Sam to his toy caboose.

Stiles goes on, "He thought, 'Hmm, what will Sammy need now that he's three? I know. A big kid bed, for big three-year-olds.' Right? What did we say?" This morning they had a preemptive talk about gratefulness.

"Keep _my_ bed."

"Remember what we said this morning?"

Sam does: "Princess Pea loves a brush her teef, sing a song..." Stiles also improvised a bullshit story about a princess named Pea who loved to brush her teeth. That one had an ulterior motive.

"About _presents_." If he remembers, Sam says nothing. "Gifts are nifty," Stiles coaches. Sam manages a halfhearted _nisty_ in unison with Stiles' _nifty_. "Right?"

Not applicable. Sam is desperate to convey how little he wants to give his bed to his sister. Derek figures this is as good a time as any to sneak away and let Stiles handle this one.

::

"Oh, _shit_." Stiles grits his teeth. He throws one hand out, digs his fingernails into Derek's shoulder. "Okay, uh—can you—" He has to pause to gasp and swallow convulsively. "Mm, can you, like, hold me like—" He grabs Derek's hand—his palm is sweaty and hot—picks it up, and plants it on his leg, which Derek hefts up on his own waist. " _Oh_ fuck—yes—"

"Damn it," Derek gasps back, helplessly jerking harder into him.

It's a quiet night, more or less nothing going on, and they don't have sex as often as they used to. So this is an event, standing out in a two week period like whipped filling in a cupcake. Stiles grunts, deep and desperate. The angle is wrong for an easy orgasm, but a quick orgasm isn't what he's after. What he wants, what Derek knows he wants, what _Derek_ wants, is bruises. Claw marks. Teeth marks. Stiles wants to feel it. He wants it raw in his skin for days, like a harsh, aching note left behind. _Derek was here_. Derek laughs a little, just to himself, and then shoves into Stiles so hard that Stiles yelps a little.

They're not really trying to make noise, but they're not exactly trying to keep quiet either.

" _Fuck_ , dude," Stiles says, a little thin, high, a little out of his depth. He tilts his head back into the pillow, tensing up with a wrecked gasp. He comes, possibly harder and deeper than Derek has ever seen him come before. It hits him in waves that Derek watches pulse over him. Stiles' eyes flutter shut, and he goes more or less limp, propped up across the pillows and Derek.

Derek thought he was gonna come slow, but after watching that, it hits him like it fell from the sky and crushed him. He wrings himself out, sags. He's hanging by one hand off the top of the headboard, strewn like a hammock between it and the bed, over Stiles. He drops his head down, shuts his eyes, and tries to catch his breath. Momentarily, he opens his eyes again. Blinking the spots out of his vision, he looks at Stiles. Stiles is rubbing his head, grimacing. Derek frowns: "Wha... what's wrong."

Stiles snorts, lowers his hand. There's an angry red spot on his forehead, clearly gonna be a welt or a bruise or something. That wasn't there a minute ago. "Nothing," he says, chuckling, a little wry. "You just fucked me into the headboard, is all."

Derek stares. Then he boggles. "I did _what_?"

"When you came," Stiles explains, laughing. "You just goddamn—it _hurt_ , I was like, _fuck_!"

"I," Derek reaches for him belatedly, changes his mind, changes it again, pauses, "I didn't _mean_ to."

"I know," says Stiles, looking at him weird. "I didn't think your, like, evil plan to bump my head finally came to fruition after six long years of, of _careful planning_ and—"

"I'm sorry."

"It's fine." Stiles presses the heel of his palm back against it. "Ow. God."

"I'm just, it was an accident—"

"Dude, I know, I'm just la—"

"Honey, I'm _sorry_ —"

"I _know_! Damn!"

Derek realizes he hasn't even pulled out yet. He does that, quickly, and Stiles gasps, winces, throws one hand down to grab Derek's knee in a belated attempt to stop that from happening. Fuck. "I'm, I was just, sorry—"

"Dude." 

"I'm _sorry_ —"

"Would you _relax_? I'm still—"

"—make it up to you, I dunno, I'll—"

"Oh, my god. Stop talking." Easy enough. Derek does. "You're gonna make it up to me, huh?" Derek nods, frustrated. "How."

Derek rolls his eyes. "Whatever you want. I'll bring you flowers or something."

Stiles adopts his empty-headed SoCal accent. "God, that's just _so_ fucking sweet of you, I'm gonna _cry_."

"No, keep mocking me," says Derek irritably. "It's not like I'm trying to apologize to you or anything."

"No, you are," says Stiles, "and you did. Like seven fucking times!" He wormed himself some time ago into an upright position, sitting on the pillows, which is vile, but they needed to be washed anyway. Now Stiles starts shoving and pulling at Derek until they've lowered themselves to the bed, lying down side by side. Derek tries to ignore the fucked up pillow case. "I was injured during sex," Stiles tells him pointedly. Derek blinks. "I have a sex injury." Wait. "I made you feel so good, you accidentally used your huge fuckin' dick to bonk me into the bedframe." Oh.

Okay. "That's disgusting, Stiles," Derek informs him, to Stiles' unending delight, "but fine. I'll drop it."

"Don't drop it," says Stiles. "I changed my mind. I want you to grovel. Really loudly, in front of everybody."

"That—"

" _Oh, Stiles, my love, I'm so sorry for throwing you across the room with the sheer force of my giant cock_ —"

"Or I can just give you a repeat show," offers Derek. "I'll hit you harder this time, knock your whole head off."

"You can cry a little. Lick my shoes."

"You never told me you had a foot fetish," says Derek. This throws Stiles for enough of a loop that he just mutely waves his hands in protest. "No. Stiles—" Derek lays a simpering look on him. " _Sweetheart_."

"Oh, no. Stop it."

"You know you can tell me anything."

"Stop. God. This is awful."

"What's wrong. Hey—" Stiles is hiding his face in the blanket. "No, what's wrong, kitten?" Stiles drops the blanket, starts socking Derek repeatedly in the chest. Repetition is key for bruising a werewolf; Derek half regrets telling him that. "Ow. _Ow_ —"

"Apologize for kitten," Stiles yells. "I mean it! Apologize!"

"I'm really not sorry for that," Derek replies, fending him off. "Like, at all."

"You're _such_ a fucking dickhead, I _swear_ to—"

"Shut up. Get up, we're washing these sheets."

::

A couple days later they see Isaac in a Baskin Robbins, and Stiles' bruise is in full bloom. Isaac squints, leans in, hands in his pockets. "Looks nasty," he says.

"It is," Stiles agrees, peering through the sneezeguard. "It really is."

"How'd you get it?"

"Oh," he glances at Derek, smirking. "I zigged when he zagged."

Derek shakes his head. "I beat him up," he tells Isaac.

"Yeah," Stiles snorts, returning to the ice creams. "Maybe internally."

That's good. Derek likes that. Isaac clears his throat. "So it was great seeing you. But I gotta go, my, um, my shirt's on fire? And I'm being arrested. Bye."

::

Derek wakes at about two in the morning as usual the morning Darcy's two years old.

This time Stiles is missing from the bed, the blankets tossed back, his ratty slippers gone. Derek gets up, gets a drink of water from the bathroom sink, and then wanders down the hall to peek in at Sam. Sucking his thumb, parrot resting, wings spread, on his face, one little foot tossed out from under the blanket. The usual. Under the window he's stacked most of his books and several toy cars: he explained to Derek that they'll scare away the ghost if it should return. Apparently ghosts are afraid of things that beep, what does Derek know.

Next he passes the master again, the stairs. Heads to the other end of the hall to see Darcy. Her crib is empty. Derek is dimly frightened for a minute before he recalls Stiles' absence. He stands at the top of the stairs, peers down into the front room. Stiles is curled up in Derek's chair, wrapped in a blanket like it's a cloak. The cat's asleep on top of the chair behind his head. He's holding Zdzisława, watching TV. It's not golf; Derek doesn't know what it is.

Her presents are already piled next to the coffee table. Derek knows what they are; after Samuel's second, he put down a strict parental approval system. His favorite is a large wicker basket full of plush food. Some grapes that attach to the bunch with buttons. A hamburger that can be assembled and dissembled, because all the contents have velcro on them. The banana's peel zips open to reveal a little, smiling banana. All the food groups and each meal is represented; and all of it, Derek thinks, thrilled, is washable! The sheriff tried to buy her one of those toy Jeeps that really drive, but Stiles put his foot down, and Derek kind of agrees. Nobody needs a goddamn mini-Jeep, according to Stiles.

Derek thinks he's just residually bitter about his own Jeep, god rest its soul.

"She okay?" Derek croaks at Stiles, descending the stairs in clumping steps.

Stiles startles a little. "Yeah," he says, soft. "Are you?"

Derek squints. "Yeah. Are _you_?"

"So we're all okay," says Stiles acerbically. "Great. Census complete."

"What're you doing." Darcy's wearing her favorite pajamas, a one-piece with feet on it, purple fleece. There's a huge blue star on the front of it; Gladys gave it to her. She's got her pacifier in, and one hand possessively resting on Stiles' wrist. She sleeps like she's grudgingly doing them a favor.

"She's two today," replies Stiles, peering down at her face. "Little thing." Derek looks, too. He likes her nose. It looks like Stiles' hedgehog nose. "I was just thinking," says Stiles slowly. "I'll never have this chance again. She's growing so fast. It's easy to forget. What if—" He looks up at Derek. "What if I forget what her laugh sounds like? What if she grows up and I forget?"

"I don't think you will," says Derek. "I don't think you can."

"Remember," Stiles says, and swallows, frowning at her face. "Remember when she was just born, and she had that gross stuff on her leg? And you tried to wash it off—"

"I didn't want to hurt her," Derek finishes. "Yeah, I remember."

"God, birth is so gross," Stiles comments. "Why do people do it?"

Darcy rolls a little, flops onto her back on Stiles' knees. "So they can do this," Derek says.

"Right." Stiles fixes the zipper on her pajamas, brushes her bangs off her forehead. "Like when you stand in line for, like, twelve hours so you can do Space Mountain." Derek squints. He _guesses_ it's like that. But you can always ride Space Mountain again, if you're so inclined. He doesn't point this out, nor does it really sink in for a minute that Stiles is an expert at ruining the moment. "We should take her to Disneyland," Stiles decides.

"Do you think Sam will like that?" Derek wonders.

They both think for a minute. Then, "No," they both say at slightly different times. "He'll hate it," Stiles says. "But it's a magical time that every red-blooded middle class Californian must experience once." If anything else, it's something new and he'll get a churro bought for him. He likes to eat.

As for Darcy, neither of them knows if she'll like it. She's always a little bit of a blip. A little oddity. Not enough that there will be books written about her, but enough that they can't always predict how something will go with her. Derek thinks she gets that from Stiles; he always used to think Stiles had this irritating, intoxicating compulsion to be different on purpose, but watching Zdzisława and her brother learn and grow is making him reassess. Maybe they just _are_ different. Annoying. Intense. Judgmental. Perfect.

"It'll be a drive," Derek warns.

"Yep," agrees Stiles. "But it's a Sunday. Scott'll be up for anything."

"Maybe the Boyds?"

"Maybe. You know Boyd doesn't like last-minute shit. You ask him."

"Fine." Allison's usually their go-to for thirds, but this time Derek says, "Get Lydia, too. She can share your sunscreen."

"Are you kidding me?" Stiles laughs. "You think she doesn't buy, like, seven-hundred-dollar sun protection lotion on the internet? Be real, babe."

"Whatever," says Derek, trudging back towards the stairs. "Get her. I'm going back to bed."

At the top of the stairs, Derek glances back at them; Stiles hunches over to kiss Darcy's nose.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ugh](https://41.media.tumblr.com/c62cf2b4fb4bae42098fe45b89601db9/tumblr_inline_nvdd98BwN31snv1fr_540.jpg)


	24. gird

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buying furniture, my kids are unsafe, and more.

"I don't want another round one," Stiles announces, meandering to the left. "I want one with _corners_."

"Stiles." Derek taps his finger on an ovular table. "We can _fit more people_ at a rounded table."

"Fit more—" Stiles turns to him, arms crossed. They're some four or five tables apart from each other. "What is this obsession with fitting more people? Fit _what_ _people_? We never have anybody but Scott and the Boyds over, anyway."

Derek drifts to the right, drawn to a perfectly circular light-stained oak. "We had that idiot over once." They had some moron Stiles used to have classes with for dinner sometime last year. He didn't stay long. Derek can't tell if it's because it was awkward and the kids were screaming, or because Derek was glaring at him the entire time. He was _so annoying_.

"Right," Stiles is saying, "and thanks to you, that'll never happen again."

"He was really disgusting, Stiles."

"Oh, sorry he wasn't _raised at court_ and—"

"He picked his nose and wiped it on the side of his beer," recalls Derek, to which Stiles has no rebuttal. Stiles wistfully examines a gigantic, mission-style cherrywood banquet table. "Fine," Derek says at length. "We'll get one with corners and have less room in the dining area."

"I can't believe I'm at a Furniture Warehouse arguing with you about _seating space_ in our _breakfast nook_ ," Stiles gripes. "And moreover, I can't believe how _wrong_ you are."

"Yes, you can," says Derek.

In the end, they select a small, rectangular table with attachable leaves that make it round. "Compromise is the keystone of a happy marriage," Stiles informs the saleslady. She stares at him for a long minute and then chooses to speak only to Derek.

::

"What's Pee School," Sam asks, frowning at his wicker doll bassinet.

" _Pre_ school," Stiles edits. "It's where you go before kindergarten. You learn some things, meet some other kids."

Sam considers this. The bassinet drives cruelly over several prone Barbies. He announces, "I'm not going to Pee School."

Stiles looks up, to one side. Then down. Then he scrubs both hands roughly over his face. Finally, " _Pre_ school. _Prrre_ school. _Please_."

"I'm stay home," Sam extrapolates.

This sinks in with Stiles. He looks shocked, disappointed. "You don't—you don't wanna?" Derek can see where this would confuse Stiles. The sheriff has informed them both that Stiles was very excited to attend school when he was this age. The novelty didn't wear off until fourth grade. "Don't you wanna go to school?"

"No. I'm busy."

"You're _busy_."

"Yeah."

Stiles gives him a look, distinctly pissed off. "Busy with _what_ , what are you doing?" Sam was not expecting this. He picks the bassinet back up, but it seems to have lost its appeal in the face of the interrogation. He tosses it away and stands. Walks over to his toy box. Stiles' shoulders drop, frustrated. "Samuel."

"I don't gonna go!" Sam insists shrilly.

"But Sam."

"No."

"Well, _some_ body's gotta go, and _I_ have a job," says Stiles. He looks smug, like he's won. "So, I mean."

Sam's face doesn't change. He looks around; his eyes land on Derek. Then he says to Stiles, " _Daddy_ can go to Pee School."

Stiles makes a weird noise. Then he stands. "Um, oh. Uh, let's take five? And, and reconvene? Okay." Derek follows. Stile is laughing hysterically before he makes it to the stairs. "He's," he begins to Derek, pointing over his shoulder with one thumb. "I just—"

"I know," Derek says drily. "I heard that I'm going to be attending Pee School." Stiles stumbles on the stairs, hangs weakly on the banister. His eyes are actually tearing up. "Jesus. Can you walk on the stairs like a normal person, please? If you break your neck because your kid said Pee School—"

" _Stop_ it," barks Stiles, red in the face. "If you say it one more time I'm gonna have a stroke!" He trips again, and Derek grabs him, holds him upright.

"Get a grip," says Derek.

"Pee School!" shrieks Stiles.

"Oh. So _you're_ allowed to say it."

::

Stiles kicks Derek awake at what feels like four in the morning; but the sun is up, bright through the slits in the blinds. "Mmmwhat. Wh'dafuck."

"Braeden's calling," Stiles rasps, pressing a phone into Derek's arm. Derek is immediately on alert, as exhausted as he feels; he snatches it out of Stiles' sleep-slack hand and fumbles it up to his ear.

"Yeah."

"Nothing's wrong," Braeden says first. Her voice still has this residual effect on Derek; it's weird. What?

"Nothing's—"

"I knew you would assume there was an emergency," she tacks on. Her voice is blasé and doting; she hates explaining herself, but she's doing it for Derek's benefit. "There isn't."

"Oh. Um, thanks. What's…?"

"I'm swinging through town tomorrow," she tells him. "Just some personal business." Classified, probably. Or, no, maybe another episode of her not wanting to explain it to him. "Thought maybe you'd like to grab lunch? For old time's sake."

Derek pauses. Then he presses the phone receiver against his chest. "Stiles."

"Mmmph. Hwum." Stiles tightens his grip around Derek's ribs. It's _like_ a hug, and could easily be _misinterpreted_ _as_ a hug, but it's more like a plea for Derek to shut up.

Derek does not. "You mind if I get lunch with her tomorrow?"

"Th'hell?" He lifts his face from Derek's tattoo. "'Re you asking for permission?"

"She's an ex," Derek says exasperatedly. "I was trying to be considerate."

"Aw." Stiles snuggles blissfully back into Derek and the sheets. "Yeah, dude. Go forth. Be free."

Rolling his eyes, Derek returns to the phone. "Yeah, sure."

"Pick you up at noon."

"Make it one."

"See you at noon," she replies happily, and then hangs up.

Derek lets his head drop back against the pillow. "Um," Stiles says tentatively, assembly-lining Derek's phone back to the bedside table; they're on the wrong sides of the bed this morning. That happens a lot. Stiles likes to spoon, and Derek likes to switch what side of his body he's lying on. Sometimes that requires some rolling around in the night. And pretty often, somebody will get an elbow in the solar plexus or his circulation cut off. Theirs is a sleep relationship of give and take. Mostly take. "Does she… know?"

Derek turns over in the circle of Stiles' arms to take advantage of the sleepiness and close quarters. "Probably not a hundred percent, no." He gathers Stiles up against his chest, and Stiles lets out a whimpery sigh. "It's not like I send her newsletters."

Stiles makes a weird snuffling snort; the auditory equivalent of an eyeroll, Derek thinks. Their relationship is also one full of eyerolls. You'd think they'd eventually stop doing it. On the contrary, it's become second nature. Sometimes Derek's not even annoyed; he's just going through the motions of it. It's like punctuation. Once, after a trip to Sacramento with Stiles and Scott, the tendons on Derek's eyeballs were actually _sore_ at the end of the day. "Fine, dicknose. When was the last time you saw her?"

"Before," Derek replies. "I don't even think I was with you yet." He considers that for a minute. "I know I texted her, though. On the eclipse." You know.

Stiles immediately says in a mockingly deep voice, "Hey, I'm married now. Derek."

"Is that your impression of a text message?" wonders Derek. "Why would I sign it? It has my name on the text thread."

"I figured you probably had one of those auto text signatures like it's 2005," Stiles explains merrily, as if he was even conscious of social customs in 2005. "And it's just your name," he goes on, "because you mean business."

"That's the stupidest thing you've ever said."

Stiles gives one sharp bark of laughter. "You've been saying that for years. It's lost any kind of significance."

"No, you're just raising the bar every year," Derek mutters against his skull. He's tired, but he couldn't get back to sleep now; the dregs of an adrenaline rush are still in his system from the sudden phone call, and now Stiles is fully awake, if pretty snuggly. "You're not worried, are you?"

Stiles pauses. Uh oh. "I'm concerned just by virtue of, like," he says thoughtfully, "hot exes. You know. I wouldn't call it _worried_." There's a blip. Derek rolls his eyes again; the irritation is strongly diluted by pajamas, but it's there all the same. Stiles senses it. "Fine. So she's beautiful and she can fire a gun while falling like she's in the goddamn Matrix. And you guys have _history_. Sue me. "

" _We_ have history," Derek reminds him, aggravated. "In fact, we have more history than I have with Braeden."

Stiles pushes himself almost excitedly up on one elbow; he has a point to make, and it's going to make Derek roll his eyes a third time, probably. "Right," Stiles is saying, "but the first, like, two and a half years of our history is negative. You know? You punched me like seven times. It, like, cancels out some of the positive."

"Wait—"

"So, like, at best—"

"Are you suggesting there's a _net history_ —?"

"She and I are _even_."

"Stiles, that doesn't even make _sense_."

"Makes _total_ sense. All your Braeden history is good history. Your Stiles history is complicated."

His hair is real soft and floppy, and it's sticking up in weird directions. "You look like a muppet."

"You look like a porno," Stiles returns.

All right. Sure. Derek's not even gonna ask. "Fine. She never had my—" He makes finger-quotes, "— _magical confusion babies_."

"Unexplained dickhaver byproducts," Stiles corrects, grinning broadly. _God_ , that's annoying. Why does he think that's funny? It's so _annoying_.

"Whatever," glowers Derek. "She also never married me." That was one of Derek's admittedly minimal problems with her. She had no interest in settling down. Nor did Cameron, who Derek was with for a few months between Braeden and Stiles, nor Kaia, who he was sleeping with for roughly five days back in the summer of '16. And maybe Derek felt the same at first, but he was _tired_ , toward the end. He was worn out, bone deep. He just wanted to go to the grocery store and spend enough to fill up a refrigerator. Just _once_. Stiles settles down, against the pillows, facing Derek. He lets Derek lay a forearm on his waist, where he's soft and warm.

"I had to lock you down," Stiles is explaining soberly. "If I didn't, you'd have moved away again. And who _knows_ who you would've done."

"What," edits Derek.

" _Who_ ," insists Stiles.

"You're gross."

"Maybe this," Stiles says, circling a finger around to highlight Derek and their pilled bedspread and their cat, quietly licking her own asshole in the cat tree, "wasn't _exactly_ what I pictured when I met you for breakfast that one time." They went to a place called Le Peep, whatever that means. They have pretty good potatoes there. Derek has a vivid memory of Stiles frowning over a huge stack of waffles, puzzling over the concept of having met Derek Hale for breakfast. He had a freshly bloomed bruise on his cheekbone, up around his eye, and stitches on his forehead, above his eyebrow. At some point he made a weird comment about never having seen Derek _eat_ before. He was—they were both so _young_ then. Not that they're in their eighties now. Derek just feels like it was another time. "But it's, I mean—" Stiles tosses one hand up, drops it back to Derek's elbow. "I can't imagine anything different now." There's a scar where those stitches were, a little, spidery, silver line above Stiles' brow. "Y'know? Like, what else _is_ there?"

"Being international spies," replies Derek.

"With mild-mannered alter egos," concurs Stiles. "And guns. I get a gun." Then he grabs Derek's hand, transfers it onto his ribs. Derek doesn't know why, but he doesn't question it either. He just looks at Stiles for a while. Puffy eyes, needs a shave, hair bent all weird, wearing a shirt that says _librarians do it by the book_ on it, as if he's a librarian, as if he's ever done anything by any book. He's got his head propped up on one hand, and he's lying in bed next to Derek talking about their life together. Derek rolls onto his back. Stiles makes a short grunt, like a subverbal protest against losing Derek's hand on his ribs.

This wasn't what Derek pictured either. In fact, this is totally unrecognizable, compared to what his life looked like only five years ago. "You don't get a gun," Derek tells him.

"Why?" snaps Stiles. " _Why_ can't I—you've _never_ let me— _no_ one does—not even in my _own fantasies_ —"

Down the hall, Derek hears a suspicious thud. "Kid," he says, pointing at the door.

"Sentence," Stiles replies, but he starts to get up anyway.

::

Samuel's preschool is mostly kids of single parents, kids whose parents both work, kids who need daycare. A third cousin of Scott's enrolled his daughter this year, which is awkward  purely because Scott seems to expect Derek to interact with him, and Sam with the kid.

The place seems to have a strong aroma of paste and pissed pants, but after discussing it with Stiles Derek concludes it's only strong to him. Stiles likes the school because the first day he brought Sammy in, a woman in a long denim skirt and a red cardigan immediately knew who he was. "You must be Sam," she said to him before even acknowledging Stiles. "I knew you'd be here."

Her name is Miss Mary, and though he hid behind Stiles' leg, Sam liked her lipstick and ballet flats.

Stiles enrolled Sam because he was deeply concerned he needed to learn to get along with other kids. Strangers. People who aren't in the know. "How's he gonna adjust to school if we hide him away?" he demands of Derek when Derek complains about the smell of the place for what Derek will admit must be the fourth or fifth time.

"We don't hide him away," Derek rebuts irritably. "He has friends."

They look over at him, playing Train with little Vernon. He does, but none of them is strictly human. One is a cat. Another is an inanimate object. His train has been idling there in the block station for upwards of fifteen minutes, and despite Verny's frustration, Sam continues to call things like "Don't leave your bag on the ground!" and "Don't fall down!" because the train does not depart until 2 o'clock.

Stiles and Derek look back at each other. "He's a loser," Derek concedes.

"But he's so great," replies Stiles mistily. They seem to have switched positions. "Look how dedicated he is to preserving train station accuracy!"

"I don't know about you," Derek breaks it to him, "but I've never been told by a train conductor not to fall down."

"Oh, right, because you travel by train all the goddamn time. Cut the crap. He's starting in August and you're going to take him there."

::

What Deaton has waiting for them when they arrive one weekend is a grubby little packet of what looks like grass and dead flower petals. It smells pretty good, though, like oregano and hollyhocks. "This is better than the other one," Deaton tells Stiles. "You brew it into a tea, drink it every two or three days. And it won't make you sick."

"Prove it," Stiles answers immediately, nose buried in the packet. "Put your money where your mouth is."

Derek shoves Stiles' shoulder, just enough to make him have to catch himself before he falls headlong off the examination table. Derek has no idea why he insists on sitting on that thing every time they come here. Deaton, to his credit, acts like he doesn't even notice.

"The way this magic works," Deaton says carefully, eyebrows bunched a little, like he knows Stiles won't like this, "is it tricks your body into thinking it's already with child."

He was right. Stiles hates this. "My life is a farce," he tells Derek flatly for what Derek thinks must be the eighth or ninth time since that first-ever bout of morning sickness. "Okay," he directs at Deaton then. "So this means…" Deaton waits for him to finish his sentence, apparently oblivious to Stiles' _go on_ gestures. "… _what_ ," Stiles continues impatiently, "it means _what_?"

"Ah," says Deaton. He's equally irritated. Derek's not sure why he keeps doing them the favor of being a werewolf pediatrician-slash-pseudo-OBGYN when he and Stiles can hardly get along without Stiles making Deaton's eye twitch. "It means you may experience some symptoms of pregnancy from time to time, particularly during the new moon cycle."

"Why the new moon?" Derek asks. Stiles cranks his head around and stares at him with flagrant disgust.

"Because," says Deaton. "It's hooked to the moon in a different way than a shifter is. It's resting on dishonesty. Subversion."

"Farcical," judges Stiles. "What symptoms are we talking about?" he goes on. He never is concerned with the why. Causes get in the way. He only ever wants to know how it will affect _him personally_. "Am I gonna lactate? Doc," he reaches out and grabs the sleeve of Deaton's boring half-zip pullover. " _Am I gonna lactate_."

"Really, Stiles?" Derek mutters.

"I happily left lanolin ointment in my past, Derek," Stiles snaps.

"I have no idea," Deaton tells him. Then he pauses to disengage Stiles' fingers from his sleeve. "You will need to maintain a healthy and regular diet." Stiles makes a face of utter loss, like this is somehow worse than lactating. "With a lot of protein. Consider taking a multivitamin," Deaton goes on. "You may experience some noticeable fluctuation in hormones. Some cravings, maybe. You may have some trouble crossing running water." Stiles shares a perplexed look with Derek. "But most of all, Stiles," Deaton looks into Stiles' eyes, "you must _never_ receive the bite while you are partaking of this magic."

Stiles stares at Deaton for a long minute. Then he says, "I'll try to restrain myself." Deaton looks exasperated. "No, really. I do it all the time. It's part of my weekend relaxation—"

"Stiles," Derek cuts him off. He looks at Derek, eyebrows expectantly up. "Shut up."

Deaton hands Stiles the packet of crap. "Let me know if you have a lot of mood swings," he says casually.

::

Samuel has a plastic vacuum cleaner. It used to light up and make noise, a tinny _vwooo_ sound that played whenever he rolled its little wheels, but Derek dug into it after bedtime one night and ripped out the wires. Now it just clatters pointlessly across the hardwood. Sam doesn't seem to notice or mind the silence. He diligently pushes it back and forth, edging around the coffee table, occasionally thunking it into the wall or a bookcase. Derek usually ignores this.

For one, the house of a family of werewolves is doomed to be scuffed and scratched up around the baseboards starting from around when the children become mobile; and for another, Sam deserves to preserve that unselfconsciousness in his play as long as possible.

But he's three and a half, and three-and-a-half-year-olds are pretty entertaining. Every once in a while Derek will set aside his shoebox of mismatched socks and observe. One day, Sam is "vacuuming" the living room, making a point of rolling repeatedly over a couple bits of spilled Cheerios. Then, suddenly, while Derek watches furtively from the kitchen, he sets the little vacuum upright, and walks away from it, dropping his hands out, palms up in a sort of aggravated helplessness. He scoops up his stuffed parrot, cradles it in his arms and shushes it, gyrates it soothingly.

That's when it dawns on Derek. Sam is playing Derek. He's _being Derek_. Delight rushes up Derek's chest so suddenly he has to clap a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing.

Sam lifts his plastic phone to his ear and says into it, "What!"

Derek has to excuse himself into the back yard.

::

Derek thinks it's a dose of his hilarious luck that the one day this month he and Stiles have time to eat lunch alone together, his uncle reappears. Says, "Hello," friendly, a little tired. Stiles and Derek are on the same side of the booth together, so he slides in across from them. His beard's gone again, and his hair's in a smooth wave, tossed to one side. There's a pair of douchey sunglasses folded and hanging from the neck of his t-shirt like he thinks he's Tom Cruise.

Stiles looks gloomily at Derek, half a fry sticking out of his mouth. "I'm hallucinating," he tells him. He has an eyelash on his cheek; Derek brushes it off. They don't believe in wishes.

"I always liked this diner," Peter continues, peering about. "It's got a certain charm to it. Something about the surly waitresses…"

"What do you want," says Derek to Peter.

"So, not a hallucination," mutters Stiles to himself.

"That's rude," Peter says. He seems almost genuine, but as there always was, there's an undercurrent of affectation, like he's putting on an improv play and he's the leading man. "It's been awhile since we've seen each other. How about a _hello, Uncle Peter, how are you?_ " The waitress stops by and he says to her, "I'd like an iced tea, please. Splenda, not sugar. And how about a nice BLT on wheat?" When she departs again, he tells them both, "I just thought I'd come by because there's _talk_."

"Talking exists," Stiles tells Derek. "Verbal communication."

"No. I don't think it's real," Derek replies to Stiles.

"You're at the center of some gossip," Peter goes on. "Some friends of mine tell me you're under some informal surveillance."

Stiles and Derek both speak at once: "Surveillance?" from Derek, and "You have friends?" from Stiles.

"Absolutely," Peter replies merrily to both queries. "There I was, enjoying my time in Louisiana, when I heard someone mention the Beacon Hills pack." The waitress reappears with Peter's tea. "Thank you, Dina," he smiles at her. Then, to Derek, "Now, I hadn't heard mention of such a thing in a very long time. Since my sister died, in fact. Naturally it got my attention.

"I asked around. It seems that there are many who are under the impression the Hales have been producing born werewolves again." He narrows his eyes, half shrewd and half mocking. "I wanted to set the record straight, but I realized quickly that I couldn't possibly know. So here I am."

Of all the times for Stiles to clam up. When Derek looks at him, he's pushing globs of ranch dressing around his plate with two soggy fries. "What's your point," says Derek flatly.

"My point?" Peter finally breaks out of his mask, laughing a little incredulously. "My _point_ is I'd like to know who you've bedded, Derek. I'd like to know if the rumors are true. It's either you or Scott: have you had an illegitimate child or not?"

"Not," says Derek. "Is that all?"

Peter looks annoyed. Join the club. "Don't omit the truth, Derek," he says. "Not about this."

Derek sighs, heavily, and glances at Stiles again. Stiles looks sullen, like he's been caught sneaking a joint in the library. Derek raises an eyebrow; Stiles shrugs one shoulder. Fine. "They're not illegitimate," Derek tells Peter.

"Excuse me?" Peter still hasn't reined his emotions back in; he's crackling with frustration. Derek doesn't explain further, because as much as he sort of loathes Uncle Peter, the man's reasonably intelligent, and he's got knowledge of the contents of the bestiary, and he can figure it out on his own. Derek watches him calculate it all in his mind, eyes darting to the ring on Derek's finger and the way Stiles is sort of slumped against Derek's shoulder. In the interim, the waitress delivers his sandwich, refills Stiles' Dr Pepper, and hands Derek an extra napkin. Finally, Peter's sharpness is back. "You," he says to Stiles.

"Me," Stiles says back, more out of instinct than anything else.

Peter laughs; Derek knew that would happen. " _You_ d— _you_ did. _You_ ha—oh." Stiles shares a grim, uncomfortable look with Derek. "I—oh, I just need to—" Peter gestures at his head. "—get this straight. In my mind." He laughs again, looks Stiles up and down. "I see. Okay. So—so this ridiculousness has reached a state of permanence," he clarifies, gesturing between the two of them with one finger. "And that resulted in the—in the cub phenomenon." He laughs a little more. "With _you_." 

"It's nice to know it has a name," Stiles tells Derek. "Shame it sounds like a sports movie, but I guess we'll take what we can get…"

He seems utterly depleted, wilting. "Drink your soda," Derek tells him, irritably nudging Stiles' knee with his own. Stiles obediently bites down on his straw. "Yes," he adds to Peter. "Is _that_ all?"

"Why _Derek_ ," Peter says a little gleefully, now ignoring Stiles entirely. He takes a bite of his sandwich. "I'm wounded, truly hurt, that you didn't think to extend an invitation to one of your only living relatives. Or even a _birth_ announcement, now _that_ —that's _particularly_ cruel."

"Well, it's not like you left a forwarding address," snaps Stiles. "And, I mean, casual reminder to the jury of the time you tried to _actually murder_ him. _Oh, wait_ , that doesn't narrow it down at all." He gulps. "Because of _all the times you've tried to murder him_!" 

Yep. Awkward delivery, but good points. Derek lets them stand; Peter dismisses them. "I suppose I just never suspected your little… _thing_ was this serious."

"Thought I was a fling?" Stiles quips acidly.

"Or _he_ was," returns Peter, to which Stiles laughs, offended. "Though I understand completely," he goes on, sharper now. "You couldn't very well leave him after you mothered his children." That shuts Stiles up. He blanches. "Unless that was the _plan_ ," Peter continues. But for the frigid smile on his face, he seems almost genuinely angry. "Read it somewhere, found a way to latch onto him and his money forever—" 

"Peter," begins Derek.

"Unless it's _deeper_ than that," Peter tacks on, while Stiles shrivels; "if there's some other _gambit_ here, don't think I won't figure it _out_ —"

"If you don't stop," Derek says, " _right now_ —"

" _Fine_ , fine, I apologize," says Peter, hands tossed up briefly. All three of them are quiet for a long moment. Derek gets the feeling Stiles would have gotten up and left if Derek didn't have him trapped against the wall in the diner booth. He considers touching him, but he feels like displaying that sort of vulnerability in front of Peter would seem like forgiveness. The contented chatter in the restaurant seems bizarre, now. "It's true," Peter marvels, more or less to himself. All the mirth seems to have dissipated. "Really true." Not the first time Derek's heard that about this situation. "There are children. The Hales are… I have _family_."

"It takes more than blood to make family," Stiles says, almost mutters. Derek finally gives in and nudges him with one knee.

"When as much of _your_ family's blood has been spilt," Peter says coldly, "I'll come find you looking for your eye-opening platitudes. Now, in the meantime?" He makes a sharp, empty little gesture, like a mocking request for Stiles to let him continue. Stiles is glaring, so angry Derek can taste it. But Peter is also angry. "I want to see them," he says to Derek.

"No," Derek says bluntly. Leaves no room for argument; of course, he has no expectation that will stop Peter from making one.

On the contrary: Peter doesn't even acknowledge it. "Who are they?" he asks. It's like Derek never spoke. "How many are there? How old?"

"You can't see them," Stiles tells him.

"I heard there were three. Is it true?"

"You _can't. See them_."

His eyes dart to Stiles. "I have a right."

"Sure, sounds legit, Judge Judy."

"A moral right," Peter insists. "What would _you_ do if you found out you had secret nieces or nephews?"

"I'm an only child," says Stiles. "And they're secret on purpose."

" _Are_ they, now? Ashamed of them, are we?" wonders Peter meanly. "Are they disfigured? Oh: are they half Japanese ghost?"

" _Fuck_ you," Stiles spits. "You _cannot see them_."

"I will eventually." Peter raises his eyebrows a little. "It'll be difficult to keep them from me forever. Don't make me _steal_ them." Stiles recoils, livid. "Only joking," Peter adds, smiling blandly. He stands up, brushes crumbs off his slacks. He scoops up his sandwich to take with him. "Oh, and Derek," he adds, mask now firmly back in place. Derek narrows his eyes. " _Do_ invite me to your next wedding."

Stiles waits until Peter's left the building before he lowers his head to the table, exhausted.

::

He's buzzing with anger and anxiety and desperation, and it's building slowly like a crescendo as they abandon their half-eaten dishes and head for home. From the driver's seat, Derek looks over and sees him bouncing his knee, chewing on the side of his thumbnail. Glowering fiercely out the window.

The kids are still with the sheriff, text messages confirm, being fed grilled cheese sandwiches on paper plates on the floor. Consequently the house is almost oppressively silent when they get inside. Stiles is stiff as a board and has his shoulders metaphorically up around his ears. He heads straight for the kitchen. He gets himself a glass of water, short and with no ice, and gulps messily at it.

As he puts his keys, wallet, and cell phone down on the rickety end table nearby, Derek watches him uneasily. Stiles' hands are shaking. He sets the empty glass down roughly on the counter. "Stiles," Derek says firmly.

"Don't," replies Stiles, trembling finger violently up. His back is to Derek, so Derek can't see his face. "I can't," he says, "I can't b-breathe."

Derek goes to him, wraps a hand around his wrist, pulls. Stiles resists, but not purposefully; he seems like he's rusted into place. "Hey—"

"I ca—I _won't_ —"

"Hey. Look at me."

He pries Stiles' hand off the counter and leads him closer, away from the counter. "I gotta, I'm so—" He drags in a breath. "—so fucking _pissed_ —"

"Focus," Derek tells him sharply. Stiles squeezes his eyes shut, and Derek backs him against the new table. "Are you focusing?"

"On what, focus on _what_ —"

"Look at me." Momentarily, Stiles does. "Focus on me. Okay?" Derek tries rubbing at his wrists, which doesn't help; he switches to Stiles' neck. Grabs the back of it and scrubs at it with his palm, squeezes. Stiles starts shuddering, breathing deeply and with some semblance of regularity. "Good. Keep breathing. Just focus on me."

"M'trying…"

His voice is still high, thin. Derek grips his hip, pushes until Stiles clumsily sits on the table. It's solid, sturdy. Firm. A good purchase.

Stiles always seems to enjoy being compressed. Derek spooning him or holding him down while he sleeps. Hugs. A few years ago—in another lifetime, it seems—Derek tied his wrists to the headboard once or twice. At Stiles' request. He likes being wrapped up and held still, sometimes. Another time, even longer ago, he and Scott got a little high and fell asleep on the floor, Scott lying flush on top of Stiles like he was a fainting couch. Stiles likes to be squished.

"Focus," Derek says again, low.

"I am," Stiles insists. "I'm focused."

He's shaking, squirming a little; suddenly Derek kisses him. It's weird, and hot, and he does it again. Stiles sort of drags him closer, clings with his shins, his knees. Whimpers a little. "I know," Derek says.

Stiles nods. "Focus," he rasps, knowingly, like he's giving advice or something. "I'm, I will focus." He leans forward, kisses again, leads with his tongue.

He sighs, almost with a ragged sort of relief, when Derek starts to undo his belt. Derek gets his hand under his pants, his shorts, strokes him until he's hard, until he's making small noises. Almost like assent, like, _yes. That_. Derek strokes him until then, and then he drags his grip up that length, base to tip. It only takes a few pulls before Stiles stifles a shout and comes all down Derek's wrist.

For a quick orgasm, this one doesn't seem to release him from its grasp for a few seconds after he's done, but when it does, it's sudden. It's like he's a puppet and somebody cut his strings. He slumps, hangs on Derek, one arm tossed over his shoulder and down his back; the other hand shudders up and touches the side of his neck. Stiles' heartbeat finally starts to settle, sated. "Oh," he breathes finally. "Oh, god. It worked."

"I… don't know what that was," Derek confesses. Meaning the sex, the touching came out of nowhere. It was an instinct. "I shouldn't have—I should have, you couldn't have—"

"Hyperventilating doesn't _drug_ me, Derek," Stiles tells him acerbically. Derek takes his word for it. Then, after a minute, "Wonder if _that_ one knocked me up."

They look at each other, shocked quiet.

Stiles snorts uncertainly. Then a laugh escapes, a wild little giggle. That does it: he loses himself laughing hysterically, wheezing and fisting his hands in Derek's shirt. Derek loses it a little himself, and he has no idea why.

"God," Stiles groans when he can catch his breath. "I'm fucking terrified."

"Me, too," says Derek.

They let the house get quiet again. Leaning on each other, thinking.

"You got come all in my arm hair," Derek tells him eventually.

"Shush."

"It's congealing…"

"Shut it."

"Let's go get 'em." Stiles lifts his head, frowns blearily at him. Derek just nods. "Take them and your dad out for dinner."

Stiles nods back. "We can't tell him," he says. It's quiet, but not so quiet that Derek could describe it as a murmur. Still, there's something small about it that makes it difficult to comprehend.

"Lying to protect him will just piss him off," Derek reminds him. Stiles starts to shake his head. "Listen, Stiles. You have more in common with him than you think. He's going to figure it out, and then he's going to be upset you kept it from him." Stiles grumbles. "Besides," Derek goes on. "We'll need his help protecting them."

That convinces him. He sighs, presses his face into the center of Derek's chest. It takes some hunching over, but he seems to be comforted by it. "I need to get back in shape," he mutters. Then he sits back. "Okay. Let's shower first. I don't need to pick up a toddler all smelling like sex. That's gross."

"You're gross," Derek replies.

In the shower, they argue about whether or not Rose and Cal from Titanic were having sex. Derek wants to say they keep thinking about what to do about Peter, but the truth is they eventually shove him to the backs of their minds. There's something about it that makes it all too huge to think about. Or maybe that's just their shitty compartmentalization kicking in: it'll be back on their minds at 2am, every night from now until the day Peter's bisected.

::

Darcy falls off of something and bumps her knee. She cries more from the shock of it, or the embarrassment, than from pain. Derek's hands are covered in enchilada sauce, so he steps over to the sink to rinse them off before he jogs over to check on her, but while he's doing that he hears Sam talking to her.

"It's okay," he's telling her, calmly. "You can get back up again."

"No," she wails back.

"Did you hurt?"

" _Yeah_." She pauses, snuffling. There's a brief quiet. "No," she admits.

"You're sad. That's okay," Samuel says again. "Daddy will fix it." Matter-of-fact. Just—completely confident, like there isn't a doubt in his mind that Derek will somehow abolish any sensation of shame left in her, any bruising of her ego, any fear or sadness. All of it, gone at the sweep of his hand.

"Daddy," she agrees.

Derek turns, slowly, heavy eyed, hands wiped cursorily dry on his pants just in time for Darcy to trot into the kitchen looking for him, half blubbering and half just fussing. She hops on her bare toes, reaching desperately, and he picks her up. "Did you fall?" he asks.

She just cries in response, scrubbing her face into his shoulder, where he's usually got a smear of dried food or snot from this exact situation. He abandons his baking dish and tortillas, heads deliberately for the bench on the sun porch to hold her for a while. From this new vantage point, he can see better. Not only can he peer directly through the archway between the living room and the kitchen and view Samuel, making a pantsless Barbie stomp repeatedly on a plastic pickup truck, soft elastomer legs bending oddly in the shins with each connection; but he can also see his own reflection in the glass French doors.

Just for a second, he sees in his pushed-up henley sleeves and scuffed shoes and nondescript brown pants the man his progeny seem to think he is. His hands are capable, he knows that, and he's strong. He's somewhat softspoken, gentle, maybe; there might be comfort somewhere in his arms. And deep in his sort of sad eyes is a hair-trigger rage—dormant now, sure, but at the ready in the event these kids are threatened. The instant he thinks someone would hurt them, he's ready to snap and kill someone. Something he knows for a fact he has in common with Stiles. The older he gets, the less inclined he is to hurt, the more distant he feels from the version of himself that would be excited by violence. But he knows, implicitly, that that line doesn't exist when the safety of his family is in question. It's vanished. Dangerously.

He sees that sturdy protection in his transparent reflection, just for a split second. Just as quickly, it's gone. He has no idea how he's expected to solve her problems. Any second now she's gonna look up at him and realize he can't do much more than feed her and kill for her. She's gonna figure it out and slink off to cry by herself until Stiles gets home.

After a few minutes, though, she stops hiccuping and sits up straight. "All right?" he asks, brushing a tear off her cheek.

"Yeah," she says casually. "Hittum leg on the table."

"Sorry about that." He has a packet of kleenex in his pocket, and he produces this and holds a tissue to her face. "Blow." She does, ineptly. "We get hurt sometimes," he tells her, wiping at her orifices.

"Yeah."

"But I think we always get better." That is a bald-faced lie. He wonders if she can tell, if she's learned to parse out the changes in heartbeats or watch for nervous tics. Or if she trusts him, believes implicitly what he tells her. "What do you think?"

She sniffs, a gross snort, and then scrubs a wrist and forearm up her face in one disheveled, patent Stilinski movement. "Yeah," she concludes, looking indifferently around like she's never seen the sun porch before. Derek looks, too, trying to see it the way she sees it. The peeling paint's been sanded off about a third of the room; Derek's tools and some wood are tossed to one side of the door to the outside; the broken step's been pried off, leaving one missing stair; and there's a web with a black widow on it in a high corner. Derek's annoyed seeing it, because he should have seen it sooner and disposed of it—one of his main jobs—but Darcy watches it a little curiously. "Fall down," she adds, commiseratingly. "Get ouch and go back up."

"That's good advice."

"Daddy," she concludes.

"Yes."

"Pompy's at wert."

"Yes."

"When he'll come home?"

Derek points, directs her attention to the clock in the kitchen. "Six-thirty. When both those hands are pointing down."

"Sick firty."

"Yeah."

"That's time."

"Yeah," he agrees, brushing her hair back. There's a dry smear of something on her cheek, and he licks the pad of his thumb so he can scrub at it.

She ducks the grooming and climbs down from his lap, toddles back into the living room, where she immediately tramples through Sam's precarious block towers. This results in copious whining, but they seem to resolve it amongst themselves. Derek takes one final look at his reflection in the glass; he thinks he looks lost. He returns to his dinner prep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When Stiles comes home, groaning and complaining, Derek feels found.


	25. everybody has a lot of feelings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My husband is insecure, my ex is beautiful, and more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How have I been writing this garbage for four years?

Kaia is at the mall, which is odd. The last time Derek saw her, she was naked and they were on a rocky beach on the southeast coast of Little Cranberry Island. She basically dropped off the grid after that. The _land_ grid. Sometimes you hook up with somebody and then they return to their family in the ocean. It happens, apparently. Derek certainly didn't let it bog him down. The memories of that motel room are vague, but pleasant. Like remembering an afternoon spent playing video games. It's not incandescent, but you feel pretty good about it.

It's a shock seeing her someplace so mundane, so out of touch with the situation he associates her with: excitement, danger, the coast. Shark teeth. Hair in frizzed out waves from the saltwater. Now she's standing outside an H&M, holding a shopping bag.

She looks amazing, though. Long hair and square-heeled boots. Derek gets a residual bump of pride from it—he wasn't even hers for a week, upwards of half a decade ago, but she did choose him, just for that week. "Derek Hale," she says. It's not how you'd say the name of, like, somebody you went to high school with, all _oh my god how **are** you_. It's happier than that, warmer, more genuine. She steps closer. He stays put; he doesn't respond to surprises very well. "Wow," Kaia says.

"Kaia. It's been a while," he agrees, and then feels stupid. What an idiotic thing to say. But what else do you _say_? It's not like they had a hell of a lot in common in the first place, aside from being half animal and not wanting to die. "What're you doing in California?"

"Oh," she says, grinning a little vaguely, "some personal stuff, I guess. A mission." Derek smirks. He's pretty sure that's verbatim what he told her he was doing out east when they met. But now she's peering down; Derek's hanging on to a child with each hand. He looks down at them  to make sure they're still conscious. Sam's sucking his thumb, parrot clamped sideways against his chest by his elbow. "Whose are _these_?" she asks. She sounds as if she's just noticed them. He supposes they're being pretty quiet.

"Uh." Derek feels out of place, all of a sudden, lost. Like a puzzle piece mixed in with a different puzzle. Like he's floating away. A little vulnerably, self consciously, he replies, "Mine."

Kaia looks back at him, shocked. " _Yours_?"

"Yes," says Derek. She double-takes the kids. "Sam, Zdzisia, say hi to Kaia," he coaches, tugging at their hands. They both mumble at her and hide behind his pants. He looks up at Kaia, deadpans, "They've inherited my social skills." 

She looks thrilled, though. "And your eyebrows," she says, eyes scrunching up with delight. It'd be pretty hard _not_ to smile back at her, but Derek's never doubted that his daughter's an Olympian. "How old are you?" Kaia directs downward, hands dropped onto her knees.

Sam ignores her. Darcy spits, " _Two_!" Like she's offended that she should have to explain this to somebody. Who _doesn't_ know she's two? God, she's embarrassing. No amount of instruction will get her to stop yelling at strangers. Derek couldn't love her more.

"Holy _balls_ ," Kaia laughs up at Derek. "You're— _two kids_! _You_ have two kids! Has it really _been_ that long?"

Derek shrugs one shoulder. "'Bout five years."

"Are you—" She twists to one side, fluidly, and unsubtly. " _You_ got _married_ ," she declares, peering at his left hand. When she straightens, slowly, she's quiet. Staring at him, maybe in wonder; maybe in judgment. "I never pegged you for the marriage type," she comments, frowning. Derek doesn't know what that means, really. And even if he did, he wouldn't know what about him _didn't_ peg marriage. Is that what he was doing wrong? Was he unpeggable? "What's she like?" Kaia asks avidly. She was kind of a romantic, Derek recalls.

Derek opens his mouth. Then he shuts it. And then, "Well, you probably don't remember, but I s—hey, don't drop that in there." Sam's wormed his hand free and gone over to show his parrot the fountain. Derek's lost count of how many times he's had to wash and dry the parrot, but he doesn't want to have to fish it out of a nasty mall fountain and carry it home sopping wet.

"Why there's moneys in it?" Sam yells back. "In the _water_?"

Kaia grins at him. "Some say _gods_ live in fountains and wells," she tells him slyly, "and if you leave them an offering, they'll grant you _one wish_." Sam scrunches up his face, appeals with a dubious face to Derek for confirmation.

"Kaia's from the ocean," Derek informs him. "If I were you, I'd believe anything she says about water."

She snorts. "Nice, Derek. That one's more from _your_ end of history than mine. You wanna—" She looks contemplatively down at Zdzisława, who has stopped standing up of her own volition and is hanging, dead weight, from Derek's hand. "You probably don't have time to grab coffee."

Derek also looks down at her. He should finish obtaining velcro sneakers for both kids, the reason they're here. If he forgets again, Stiles will let them trek around in their sock feet, and Derek will explode. But… "How long are you in town?" Derek asks.

::

"Are _all_ your exes super hot?" Stiles asks, smirking. He's trying ineptly to scramble eggs for some reason, like it's not two in the afternoon. "No, really, I _must know_."

"It's true," says Derek expressionlessly; "I refuse to be with anyone who _isn't_ 'super hot.'"

" _Ho_ ," Stiles laughs. "Shit, buddy, you— _you_ have _fallen by the wayside_ , okay? Down in the goddamn dumps. Started at the top and now we're _here_."

Derek doesn't even address that. "I _knew_ you'd throw a fit. I didn't _summon_ them here, Stiles. I'm not running into old flames _at_ you."

"Listen," says Stiles, but Derek doesn't listen.

"Are you seriously _upset_ about this?" he asks, twisting around to look up at Stiles; he's currently painting a step.

Stiles scrapes the eggs around gratingly. " _No_?"

"Aren't you?"

"No! It's, I was joking. I was goofing around…"

Derek listens to his heartbeat, but it's not an exact science, and he can't decide if he believes Stiles or not. Just in case, he says defensively, " _You_ do that whole continuous Facebook conversation thing with my cousin."

"Oh, _wow_ , the false—the false equi—the _difference_ ," Stiles huffs, wagging a finger, " _sir_ , if you'd _like_ to know, is—is Malia, _she's_ the one who dumped _me_. First of all." That's a long story, actually, and one Derek doesn't find relevant. "And secondly, you're _both_ , like, superheroes or whatever. And third, _don't_ front with me, I _know_ you guys text baby pictures back and forth like middle-aged women."

"Superheroes? What are you even—?"

"You and Malia, are, like, on the same _strata_ , is the point," Stiles tells him, taking the pan off the burner and jabbing his spatula at the eggs. They schlump onto the plate in one stiff, brown unit. "It goes, like," he starts demonstrating with the spatula-holding hand, "human," higher up, "hunter," still higher, "magically endowed human-slash-mercenaries," and higher and higher, while Derek glares, dumbfounded, "hauntings, were-whatever, water-dwellers, fae, _literal Jesus Christ_."

"Really?" drawls Derek. He abandons the step, tosses his brush down and stands. "I'm below a water-dweller? Why?"

"They can breathe underwater," shrugs Stiles. He truly thinks this should be obvious. "But listen." He gestures once again. "Human." Higher. "Were-thing." Lower. "Human." Higher. "Hale-Tate family connection." He slices the hand around horizontally. "Same strata!"

"I'm not really that surprised you made, like, a food group pyramid out of this stuff," Derek comments. "I _am_ surprised you put Jesus at the top, like you're not Jewish."

"Only half," says Stiles, "And it's not, it's a cultural, would you _listen to me_?"

"Listening," says Derek, leaning against the counter.

"I, ih—the—" Stiles looks at his plate of eggs. They are clearly overcooked and inedible. He's quiet for a minute.

"Yes?"

Stiles sags morosely. "Never mind. I lost my train of thought."

"Okay?"

"I'm gonna go chip this into the garbage." He scrapes the eggs back into the pan, slouches out the back door with it. There's something droll about watching Stiles trudge across their lawn with an unidentifiable lump attached to a pan, but Derek isn't laughing.

He feels pretty pissed, actually. After thinking for a hot minute, he bangs out the rickety sun porch door and follows Stiles' footsteps.

They have several trash cans that Derek has to lug down to the main road once a week. One of them is pretty typical, big and green and plastic with wheels and a hinge lid. The second one is blue. It's for recycling. The last one was at the house when Derek started reno, one of those old metal ones like Oscar lives in.

Stiles is using none of them. He's tossed the pan and spatula onto the gravel and he's sitting on an old, splintered bench with peeling paint, head in his hands. "Don't say it," he says flatly before Derek has a chance to yell at him. "I already know. I'm _sorry_." It doesn't take the wind out of Derek's sails so much as make him not want to sail as much.

Derek takes a deep breath. How to say this tactfully… "What," he asks, "is wrong with you." Wait, no.

Stiles scrubs his hands around in his hair. "That is a great question," he tells Derek, snatching the pan back up. "A query for the ages. I wrote to NASA about it, and I haven't gotten an answer yet. This—" He sighs, shows Derek the pan. "This is unsalvageable. I can't cook, either."

"Either?" Derek repeats.

"Ruiner of eggs," Stiles specifies, smiling a little, "in addition to other qualities. Or," he gestures with the pan, "you know, detriments. Or whatever."

Derek considers this, eyes narrowed. About half the time Stiles speaks, Derek gets this weird undercurrent of meanness, directed inward. It's like Stiles is wryly subtweeting himself. And the thing is, Derek wants to comfort him, but he also doesn't know what to _say_. Don't hate yourself? Stop it? Hey, that's my idiot spouse you're talking about? It's not like anything Derek could say would actually convince Stiles not to insult himself like this; Stiles is too smart for that. He can out-reason anything you could say to him. The only thing he accepts without protest is grilled cheese.

And he's not like this all the time. Derek's seen this before: it's not sadness, it's this pent-up anger that Stiles knows is unreasonable. He used to take out his anger on the people around him, but whether it was procreating or simply growing up, he's reduced that; now he takes it out on himself. He looks half crumpled, like a receipt in the garbage. And Derek can't find any logic in being pissed off at Stiles for hating himself; what Stiles is angry about, though, what the stressor is— _that's_ what's pissing Derek off. "This is about Kaia," Derek says.

"What is," says Stiles. "What, this?" The pan-egg combination again.

"And Braeden," Derek goes on. "This is about them."

"Oh, my god. No, it's not."

"It is."

"Um, I _think_ I would know."

"Right." Derek folds his arms, steps closer. "You think I'm gonna fuck my exes, is that it?"

Stiles flinches. It's minimal, blink-and-you'll-miss-it—but Derek did not blink. "No," he says measuredly, "I did not burn eggs because I don't trust you."

"Then _what_. I'm gonna talk shit about you or something? Everybody secretly hates you?"

"Dude, I said no. Drop it," says Stiles. There's a dark simmer in his voice that Derek wants to boil over.

"You're jealous of them," decides Derek. Nothing. "No? Jealous of me?" Stiles sighs irritably. "Oh," Derek goes on, "you feel insignificant." Stiles narrows his eyes, gives an aborted head shake. " _That's_ it. You don't like comparing yourself to other people. You think _I'm_ comparing you, and you'll come up short so th—"

"Of _course_ I will," Stiles interrupts viciously. "Why _wouldn't_ I? I don't have the _energy_ ," he jerks the pan around, eggs falling out of it, "to deal with _any_ of this. All I do is _fight_ you and—and and make this _futile effort_ to track fucking _kidnappings_ on fucking _weekends_ like it's my _fucking hobby_ , and no attempts to change myself will work!" He waves his hands, pan and all, in the air. " _Ever_! Believe me," he laughs, "I've tried! You're just _chained_ to me because you've _always_ been tied to me and you think you _have_ to be tied to me, and people _want_ you," he's almost shouting now, and still gesticulating with the pan, tendons standing out hard and taut, like he could lose it and smash something with it at any second, "whether they want your _dick_ or just to _be_ with you, _everybody wants you_ , and I don't," he drags in a breath, "I don't know how much wanting you can _stand_ before you just get _dragged away_ —" Derek claps a hand over Stiles' mouth. He just doesn't want to hear any more. The pan hits the gravel. Stiles settles, wilts, collapses inward again. He shuts his eyes.

Derek takes his hand away. "Are you done?"

"God, I wish," says Stiles weakly. "I w—I sh, I shouldn't," he swallows, "I shouldn't have said, I didn't mean—"

"Yes, you did," Derek replies.

"I _told_ you to _drop_ it," says Stiles. "It's not—it's not, like, a _thing_ , okay, Derek?"

"It's not a—what does that _mean_ , it's not a thing?"

"Of c- _course_ I'm upset," says Stiles miserably. "I'm _always_ upset. All right? But I'm trying so hard—" He pauses to take a breath. " _So hard_ not to make it your problem. Okay? This isn't something I need you to fix."

"So I'm just supposed to know you're upset and pretend it's not happening," says Derek.

"Um, yeah."

"Why."

"Because it's cr—it's s—it's irrational. I'm not—when I get psycho like this, I don't want you to have to—to have to ch-change what you're doing to appease me, like I'm, like I'm some kind of _evil dragon_ in your—"

"Stiles…"

"—eating every knight who tries to—"

"Stiles." Stiles sighs heavily, scrubs a palm across his brow. "I'm _going to coffee_ with Kaia. I'm _going_ to walk around with her in the park for a while."

"Okay. That's _good_ , dude, that's—"

"I might take the kids. I might not. I haven't decided yet."

"That's _totally fine_ , you know that, right?"

"Yes. Stiles."

"What."

"You're still upset."

"It's the d—it's leftovers. I'm tired. Don't worry about it." Derek sighs. "Seriously, man, if you'd left it alone you wouldn't even notice."

That is false. That is straight-up misinformation. Does he really think that? Of course he does. Derek pays attention to Stiles' every goddamn whim, because he's in love with him; but of course as many times as Derek has reminded him of that, Stiles still doesn't file it away with his truths. He probably just sticks it in a drawer labeled _miscellaneous_. "This is what happens when you stop venting," Derek tells him instead of directionlessly pledging his love again. "You get all—" Pent up? To coin a phrase from Stiles, _explodey_? "—wrong about stuff." Stiles rolls his eyes, slow and expressive. "I think that _little teapot_ song was written about you."

Stiles shuts his eyes, laughs once. It caught him off guard. He wasn't planning on laughing today, not genuinely at least. He looks down at the pan again, and the inedible eggs strewn across the gravel.

"How are you so bad at eggs?" Derek wonders, ostensibly under his breath.

"Eggs are hard." 

"They're really not. You have to take them out of the pan _before_ they're burned."

"They looked runny."

"They always look runny. They're eggs."

" _Forgive_ me," says Stiles irritably, "for not wanting to get salmonella. All right? First of all. _Second_ of all, at least I kept all the shells out this time. And _third_ of all, it's a—"

With the lists again. Derek heads him off at the pass.  "Why were you making eggs _anyway_?" He grabs Stiles' wrist and tilts it, looks at his watch. It's the same watch he's been wearing since Darcy was born; Derek's pretty sure it's a woman's watch, but he won't say anything. "It's not even three yet, and you _never_ make eggs."

"What does it matter what time it is if the issue is that I never make eggs?" asks Stiles, making a face like Derek's gone intellectually bankrupt. "What, it's, like, not _eggs o'clock_ yet? What the fuck?"

Goading Derek is probably a dangerous life choice; Derek could snap his spine at any second. "It's not a mealtime, Stiles. Typically, people don't choose to make a new dish as far away from an actual mealtime as possible."

"Oh, like _you're_ the poster child for being _typical_ ," snaps Stiles, but Derek just stares at him for long enough that the sarcasm times out.  "I'm practicing," he finally explains. "I'm trying to not be a shitty cook."

"Why?" Derek demands of him. "You don't even _like_ cooking." That's their tacit agreement. Stiles works and produces children, apparently, and Derek cleans and produces sustenance. Sometimes he orders Chinese delivery and arranges all the food in bowls and plates. It tastes less like MSG when it's coming out of a serving dish. "You don't need to cook, because _I_ cook."

"I know," says Stiles simply. "You cook. You always cook. You shouldn't have to cook all the time." 

Oh. Oh, jesus. Here's Stiles, convincing himself Derek's being tempted away from him by wily seductresses from his past, and trying to make up for some frankly nonexistent imbalance in their relationship, and here's Derek, treating him like he's Sam grinding play-dough into the carpet. Derek sighs, long and deep. So they _had_ run out of eggs in like four days. Derek had written that off as a miscalculation on his part. "You don't need to cook," Derek tells him. "You bring home dinner sometimes, and that's good enough for me."

"I bring home Boston Market," Stiles points out, as if that's a counterpoint.

"Exactly," shrugs Derek. "Their meatloaf is better than mine."

"Yours is made with love."

"Who told you that? It's not true." 

"Hey. Um… thanks," Stiles says. Derek stares, thrown off course. "For, I mean, listening."

Derek watches him for a long minute. He looks very tired. Just this side of drowsy. Derek nods, once. Then he says, decisively, "I'm gonna take you to bed now."

Stiles smirks at his shoes, blushes with pleasure. " _Now_?" he asks meekly. "I need to wash the pan…"

"I'm gonna take you to bed now," repeats Derek.

Upstairs, he sucks Stiles off, and then watches him sleep for a while before he sneaks out of bed to go retrieve the pan from the back yard and wash it. The egg is irreparably burned on. So much for "non-stick." He chucks it in the garbage; he'll just buy a new one.

::

Every Friday Samuel is collected from his semischool by his grandfather and fed cheap fast food for lunch. "Taco Bell Fridays" are looked forward to with great anticipation by everyone but Darcy: Stiles gets Friday afternoons off, "so I can get a jump start on Guaranteed Get-Some Night;" Derek only has to feed one toddler; and Darcy hasn't noticed much of a difference. The sheriff delivers Sam safely home afterwards, and the first thing the kid always does is leave his shoes strewn about the living room and let the cat outside. Today, however, he does not. "Show 'em, kiddo," the sheriff prompts, and Sam approaches Derek and Stiles, who is at the sink scrubbing the skillet they used to make grilled cheese.

Sam has meekly produced a drawing. It looks like a horrid, brown candelabra, with wobbly arms and with massive, sick orbs in lieu of candles. A rough smear of cerulean blue rests on its head. Derek can see the work Sam put into it, and lately at least his drawings have begun to look like something instead of like vaguely shaped vomit: he's improving. "I like this use of blue," Derek tells him.

"Yeah," Sam accepts.

"Did you make this at school?"

"Yeah. I draw—make, ummm, did it at school." He's pretty confused by conjugation; Derek doesn't blame him. Every verb in English is an irregular one. He reiterates with his characteristic melancholy air, "I did it at school."

"Can I see?" asks Stiles, drying his hands. Derek passes him the paper. "Oh! Dude, this is a great apple tree!"

An _apple tree_? Derek leans over to double take it. Sam looks thrilled. "Thas the sky," he tells Stiles, indicating the blue.

"I can see that," Stiles answers. "See the branches?" he asks Derek, and yeah. Derek sees it now. The crimson circles at the ends are lumpy, an attribute he now recognizes as that of an apple. "What's that?" Stiles is pointing at a green-brown scribble at the bottom of the paper. Derek had discounted that as a mere scribble.

"Deer poop," Sam explains.

"You're the best," Stiles says. "I love this. Can we put it on the fridge?"

"Okay."

Sam leaves the kitchen to pick up his typical afternoon routine, while Stiles laughs, doubling over with the effort not to make any noise. "I guess he learned about seeds today," the sheriff tells them, approaching with a grin.

"Seeds?"

"And how the deer eats the fruit and then, ah… distributes the seeds…"

"I gotta memorialize this," Stiles says, delighted. "This is—this is crucial." He digs a pen out of the junk drawer; Derek catches a glimpse of a bottle of lube. On the back of the paper, Stiles carefully prints the date and subject (" _apple tree + deer poop_ "), and then tapes it to the fridge. Dead center, on the freezer door, so he has to look at it every time he uses the fridge.

Below and around it on la Galleria Frigo are other drawings, all with captions by Stiles. He's adamant that he never forgets a single detail of this portion of his life. Derek recalls that Laura's baby book was the most detailed, with each subsequent Hale kid's more sparse than the last; however, Stiles seems to have shirked that tradition. He fills these out obsessively, every inch of every page crammed with notes and photos: _Darcy's favorite shirt at two years and six weeks; today Sam learned the word "creepy"; Derek's on a meat loaf kick_. It's a combination, Derek thinks, of Stiles' obsessive nature and his distant but everpresent fear that someday he will lose his mind and all the memories that go in it. That the fridge only has a handful of drawings on it is due to Derek's need for visual simplicity. He can't medicate his anxiety, so Stiles helps out as much as he can. He needs significantly less prodding than Derek had thought he would.

Sam's very first deliberate drawing, a single purple scratch, titled "store" by proxy, has long since been removed and preserved in the baby book, but there are others from the same era on the fridge, such as "self portrait," a two-inch green scribble-block, and "Grandpa," a big red X. More recent works include a misshapen circle with embellishments titled "Cousin Verny (in car)" and a piece of paper almost entirely colored black, called "it came." The other kid's done some drawings as well, but she doesn't do it as often as Sammy does. She did, however, draw on the wall behind the table a violent scribble which happens to look uncannily like a carefully stylized drawing of a cat sitting and looking over its shoulder. Derek was furious at the time, but the more he looks at it, the more he thinks it works: if anything in their house screamed of the central nature of children in their lives, that's it. More permanently and artistically than the broken sconce, not yet repaired from its encounter with a thrown ball just before Christmas, or the fact that there is always a heap of tiny shoes by the front door.

While the sheriff recounts some event involving an idiot driver outside Taco Bell who apparently can't figure out the turn signal, Stiles is staring mistily at the tree drawing, tracing each waxy line with his fingertip. It's breezy outside, windy enough that Derek can hear the air hitting the side of the house occasionally; the sun fades in and out as clouds pass in front of it; Sam predictably lets the cat out; the sheriff and Stiles are laughing. Derek sighs, looks around the kitchen, and makes a memory.

::

Later that night, after Derek's pushed Stiles onto his hands and knees and wrung an orgasm out of him, the slow and deep kind like Stiles never seems to be aware that he wants, Stiles goes over his board in the office. "What's purple mean," asks Derek from the desk, watching. Stiles has changed into his pajamas—old lacrosse t-shirt and Hollister sweats—but his hair's still all messed up from sex and there's a scratch on his arm that's unmistakably from an errant claw. Basically, Derek is enjoying the view.

"I've changed my system," Stiles answers, stretching the violet yarn from one pushpin to another. His shirt rides up when he reaches like that. "Red's the werewolf kids. Yellow's nonwolf shifters. Purple, or, or lavender or whatever—"

"Whatever."

"It was called _lilac dreams_ at the store. These are _all_ amber alerts." He addresses Derek, solemn. "It was the only color that they weren't out of in the bulk size." He turns back to the board. Derek glances at the corner, where Stiles' forgotten bag of knitting supplies rests, still untouched since he moved it in here from what is now Darcy's bedroom.

"So… any ideas?"

"Yeah. First of all? Kidnapping is bad."

"Okay."

"Like, really bad."

"Astute."

"Mm. Second. Police think these aren't connected because they're all different. Look." He digs through a pile of wrinkled papers on the table underneath the board, and separates out several sheets. He slaps these down in front of Derek at the desk. "Different times, different places, different descriptions of the perps, different cars, different MO each time…"

"Okay." Derek watches him stretch green yarn from one pin to another. "Why do _you_ think they're connected, then?"

"Because of this. Green means found."

"Found?"

"Yeah. Kid found later, and look:" He separates out a few of the papers, which have green post-it tabs on them. "These all say they were taken someplace and then abandoned for some reason. This one was driven out to Madera and left by the side of the road. She just woke up out there."

"Alive?"

"Yeah. She doesn't remember a thing. And this kid? Wait. Hang on… this kid…" He's digging through the pile. He doesn't find it, and starts to go through the papers again. "There. Fuck. Okay. This kid they _rescued_? Only, the kidnappers weren't anywhere in the building. They were just gone."

"All right," says Derek slowly. Certainly weird, but… Maybe it's the dregs of climax, but he's not following. He often isn't, come to think of it. "Why does that…"

"Getting to it. Look. You see? Red and yellow never overlap with green."

"Ah. So the human kids are being left behind."

"Yeah. They're snatching kids based on hunches and then leaving them when they're not a shifter."

An odd development, to be sure; but they already knew it was shifters—wolves, in particular—being targeted. "How do you know which ones are shifters?" he wonders. "Are you calling each one and just—"

"I recognize some of the family names," Stiles explains, "from your aunt's journal. Others, I call the ones we _do_ know and see if _they_ know. Usually someone does. I married into an almost-community."

"You did," agrees Derek.

"I was thinking, um… well…"

"What."

"Of driving out to one or two of the closer ones. Looking around. Asking some stuff?"

"Asking them _what_?" Derek's already exhausted just at the thought of it. It's not easy maneuvering around small children. "Stiles, this isn't your _job_. You _have_ a job. You have _two_ jobs, actually."

"Oh, don't make it sound like I work at Wendy's on weekends or something," grouses Stiles, pinning a grainy photo of the latest victim to his corkboard. What is it with him and Wendy's? "Parenthood isn't a _job_ , because it's not voluntary."

Derek snorts, says judgmentally, "It is for _some_ parents." Having grown up in a large family himself, he's seen more than his fair share of parents walk out on their family.

"Not for me." Stiles makes glowering, firm eye contact.

"Stiles…"

"I _get_ that this stresses you out," sighs Stiles, looking down at his wrinkled mess of papers. Some of them are in manila folders with official-looking red ink stamps and labels from a labelmaker on them; Derek wonders if the sheriff knows Stiles has those. "I just—think about it all the time. I can't stop worrying about it. And what with your uncle back in town doing god knows what, and this—I j—I just—I feel like—if we, if I show these other parents what I've found. If I…"

He trails off, gets distracted frowning at his board, gnawing absently on his thumbnail. After a few minutes, Derek says his name again. He twitches—not a jump, but startled all the same—and then turns to Derek.

"I think I really want some Wendy's," he tells Derek.

Derek watches him fondly for a second. It's Friday night, so nothing's stopping them. "Let's go," he says. 

::

Lydia's been dating a kindergarten teacher named Jason. 

At first it seemed promising. Lydia's taken a shine to Samuel lately; privately, Stiles told Derek he thinks it's because she's realized how fast kids learn things, and Derek agrees. " _Those_ clouds are warm," Sam told her one time, "it's meat-eater-ology," and Derek saw a real, genuine smile on her face. She spends time with them an evening or two a week anymore, ever since she started her new internship at the observatory up on top of the titular Beacon Hill. It stands to reason that her dating somebody who enjoys children would mesh well. Derek's not sure he likes Jason; Boyd works with him and isn't a fan. But Lydia seems intent on making him a fixture in her relationship with them; like she makes more sense with them if her boyfriend is a kindergarten teacher. 

They all go get ice cream one warm Saturday evening, and stroll leisurely down the sidewalk in front of Stiles' book store in one spread-out group. Scott's up at the front with Darcy and Stiles. Lydia is in the back with Derek and Sam. Jason is hanging around Lydia. Suddenly, Samuel trips and falls. His little cup of vanilla ice cream plops its contents directly into the gutter. It takes Sam a second to react; in fact, it takes Derek a second to react. Derek's learned to make his reactions proportionate to the kid's: if Sam doesn't wig out, Derek says nothing. Of course, Sammy bursts into tears, sits up, puts his palms to his cheeks. "Hey, now," Jason, who was physically closest at the time, says, squatting down to his level. "It's just ice cream."

"Dropped it," Sam cries sadly. Derek takes the initiative to pick up the ice cream cup and toss it into a nearby trash can, which was the wrong move: " _No_ ," Sam is wailing, pointing ineptly.

"Hey, c'mon. You dropped it anyway. Stop." Sam gets the hiccups. "Big boys don't cry," Jason coaches sagely. Derek deeply regrets letting him take the lead on this. Jason's advice doesn't seem to compute with Sam, who, Derek realizes, has rarely, if ever, been told something so trivializing.

And in any case, he's not hurting anyone. He's allowed to cry about things. Derek's cried about things. Stiles has cried about things. Everyone has cried about things; it's called being a person. "That's, that's not," Derek begins uncomfortably.

But Jason makes it worse: "You don't wanna act like a little _girl_ , right?" His tone is teasing—he thinks he's being pleasant, Derek thinks. Derek can't figure out what about this situation pisses him off the most: the dismissal of his kid's rational response to losing out on ice cream, the bizarre choice to indirectly insult his _other_ kid, or the fact that he's trying to demonstrate his own "kid skills" at the expense of a real, actual kid with a parent standing three feet away. In the end, it doesn't matter: Derek's tentative dislike of him is now justified and multiplied tenfold.

Before he can snap his fingers in Jason's face like he does to the cat when she's trying to eat his pasta, though, _Lydia_ steps in, of all people. She says indignantly, "He can cry if he needs to." Jason laughs once: a disagreement. Derek observes; he was present for one of Lydia's unceremonious breakups a while ago, and wants to witness another right now. "Why would you say that?"

"What's the _ma_ —he _doesn't_ need to. No one _needs_ to cry," he points out, standing, Sam forgotten.

"Oh, right, you've _never_ been upset about something before."

" _Seriously_? You're mad because I said don't _cry_? This is so _typical_ —"

This isn't what Derek was hoping for. "Hey," says Derek. 

"Typical _what_ , Jason?" Her tone's getting icy. Derek is trying to edge his way between them and Sam. "Typical _little girl_?"

" _Here_ we go."

"Do you tell your _students_ things like that? Because _I_ certainly—"

" _Hey_ ," insists Derek. They both look at him. He gestures to Sam, still sitting on the ground crying harder than ever, and reaching pointlessly for the spilled ice cream. "Go away," he says. They stare at him. Lydia's eyes are crackling with anger, not directed at Derek; just directed in general. "Shoo." They finally step away, and Jason continues the argument, slightly hushed; Derek ignores them, kneels next to his kid. "I saw you fall. You all right?"

"No," weeps Samuel. "Dropped it."

("Didn't _mean_ anything by it," Jason is trying to explain somewhere to Derek's right, "I just think you shouldn't—" Lydia's shushing him, but he's not having it. In fact, this conversation has become symbolic of their two-month relationship and now seems like a great time to hash it all out in front of a laundromat.) "I saw," Derek tells Sam. "You weren't even finished yet, were you."

Sam shakes his head, tears rolling down his cheeks. They're still sacked out on the sidewalk; thankfully there aren't very many people around. "I'm did a _bad_ thing. Fell and _dropped_ it." He's worried about the mess, subdued behind the grief over his dessert. He starts to slide into indistinct cry-talking, and Derek stops him from trying to pick up a lump of melty, dirty ice cream. 

"No. It was an accident." Derek can hear Jason finally getting shitty with Lydia and maligning his parenting skills ("—just _saying_ that when you've worked with kids for _four years_ , you _learn_ that _sometimes_ tough love is the healthiest—"), but he's frankly heard worse. Stiles has noticed the holdup and returned to hover, but he doesn't interrupt. "Did you get hurt?" Derek asks Sam. There's a scrape on the heel of Sam's palm, but he doesn't see any blood.

Sam doesn't answer immediately because he's wiping his nose on his sleeve. Derek lets him: pick your battles. "Yeah," he finally answers. "My elbow," he says, "and my heart."

Derek experiences a potent rush of affection, and has to actually make himself not laugh with it. He deals with it by putting a hand on Sam's back. Sam leans into it. "Oh, no!" Stiles finally contributes, as if he just came in on this and has no idea what's going on. "What happened!"

"Dropped it," Sam explains tearfully. He points at the gutter. "Wan' _ice_ cream."

"You dropped it? Dude! That _sucks_!" Derek looks up at Stiles. Stiles points at Lydia and Jason and mouths, _what the fuck_? Derek waves this away, so Stiles offers a hand to Sam. "You okay to get up?"

Sam continues to gaze, heartbroken, at where the ice cream is swirling away with some old rainwater. "No," he finally concludes wretchedly, hiccuping. 

"No? You're just gonna sit there?" Stiles crouches, rests his elbows on his knees and his face on his palms.

"Yeah."

"You're gonna stay here forever? And never move, _ever_?"

"Yeah."

"And you're just gonna let people splash you and bump into you and stuff?"

"Yeah." Sam's voice is getting less and less despondent.

"Well, let your daddy get you started," says Stiles, and he points at Derek, snaps his fingers a couple times.

Derek obediently pushes Sam over with his foot. By the time the kid hits the sidewalk, he's laughing again. Thankfully, Zdzisława doesn't notice, because she's bringing Scott rocks from a potted plant outside a Chinese restaurant, or else she would plop herself down on the sidewalk and demand to be kicked to the ground also. Samuel pushes himself back onto his feet, and then scrubs the remnant tears from his face with the backs of his wrists. "Again," he says. Predictable. Derek does not do it again.

"Oh, good, you're standing again," says Stiles, dragging Sam in for a Stilinski hug. Sam buries his face in Stiles' shoulder. "I guess we won't turn your room into a broccoli storage room, then."

"Broccoli," Sam repeats into Stiles' hoodie. He doesn't seem to get the joke.

"What're you gonna do about your ice cream?"

"I dunno."

"It's dirty, so we can't pick it up, huh."

"Yeah. It's dirty."

"What else can we do?"

"I—" He pulls back from Stiles, sniffling. "I buy more."

"Do you have a job, though? Do you have money?"

"No."

" _No_? How do you pay bills?" Sam laughs again, but otherwise ignores him. "Well, how about this. You wanna share _my_ ice cream?"

Sam considers Stiles' ice cream. It's not the vanilla he was enjoying earlier, but he seems to decide strawberry is an acceptable replacement. He concludes optimistically, "Yeah."

"Cool! We can share it on our way home." Stiles stands, grimacing as his knees pop.

"You're popcorn legs," Sam comments matter-of-factly, reaching up to take his hand.

Behind Derek, Jason and Lydia are still arguing, and it sounds like it's gotten personal. "—of you acting like you know what you're actually _talking_ about, Lydia. Like your _special math degree_ makes you an expert in everything. So, I dunno! Maybe you should just stick to what you know best, all right?"

Arms crossed, eyes narrowed, Lydia inquires coldly, "Which is _what_ , exactly?"

Derek strolls casually over while Jason eyes her from head to toe. Derek's not sure what shitty comment he's about to make; he doesn't particularly care. What he _does_ care about is the fact that this man is an asshole—and not even the kind Derek would marry. Jason laughs, once. "I dunno. Shopping? Looking at the stars? Whatever it is that you do."

Derek's just had some practice pushing somebody over, and feels he's ready for the big leagues. Even with just one hand, it doesn't take much effort to make Jason stumble and catch himself on a lamppost. "Goodbye," Derek tells him.

"Seriously?" Jason snaps. "Don't go there with me, bro."

Derek would love to see Jason try to fight him. It would be too easy, however.

"Can't wait to see what kind of people your _children_ turn out to be."

"Well, my daughter takes after Stiles," Derek tells him. "So there's a chance she won't stop at pushing you into a street light."

"Are you _threatening_ me?"

"Yeah," says Derek shamelessly. Watch your back in several years. In the meantime, watch your calves. "Basically."

Jason scoffs, takes one final look at Lydia, and then leaves, heading down the sidewalk in the other direction. He's still holding a soggy ice cream cone, which he pitches angrily to the ground. He cusses and calls Derek a homophobic slur under his breath as he goes. Derek addresses Lydia warily. Ordinarily she would loathe Derek stepping in on her behalf; but Derek has to admit he's a little protective. It was about her, and it was about Sam, and it was a little bit about Darcy. But it was mostly about the fact that Derek hates that guy. Lydia's still got her arms folded. She looks away. "Why am I so bad at dating?" she asks Derek. "Why am I only good at one night stands, and week long—? Why—?" She cuts herself off before she betrays too much.

 _Why is everyone crying on a trip where we got ice cream?_ Derek puts his hands in his pockets, looks where Lydia is looking. Scott's a couple storefronts down, laughing sunnily at something Stiles just said. "Couldn't tell you," he tells her. "Maybe… you should try for what you _really_ want."

Lydia sniffs, once. Then she composes herself, a cool mask settling into place. She smoothes her hand down her braid. "So I hear Scott's dating someone new," she says, "an artist? What's her name?" Breezy voice, and inflected as if it's a subject change. But it's an answer, and Derek accepts it. They start to follow everyone else.

::

Derek's pouring sand over a freshly lain brick walkway in Gladys' back yard. It's cloudy, threatening to rain, which will be good for setting the sand. "That looks good," Gladys calls from the porch. She's got Darcy around the belly, carrying her the way you carry a coat it's too warm to wear. Darcy is grunting and kicking her little feet, but doesn't otherwise seem unhappy with the circumstances. "This'll be _nice_ ," Gladys adds. "I can get to my _hydrangeas_ , do my _gardening_ …"

"Hand me the broom," Derek replies.

"Get it yourself. My hands are full."

Derek gets the broom. He'll admit the pathway's not quite messy, but definitely uneven. He's not a professional walkway layer. But Gladys seems to like it, and it only took him a few hours to do. He's swept the sand around for all of thirty seconds when his phone starts to ring. It's Stiles. It's well after when Stiles typically eats lunch; Derek frowns, puzzled, at the screen for a moment before he answers. Finally he lifts it to his ear. "Yeah." 

There's a pause, long enough that Derek's about to look at the phone screen to see if Stiles hung up. Then, a woman's voice says, "Uh, Derek, right?"

Derek thinks for a second. " _Jenna_?"

"Yes," she says hesitantly. She's got a brisk, almost masculine sort of voice—not deep, just disaffected and no-nonsense. She sounds uncomfortable, though, which—although Derek's never actually spoken to her—seems out of character. Stiles talks about her enough that Derek feels like he knows her.

"Who wants soup?" Gladys announces from the patio. "I'll make soup."

"Soups," the kid shouts.

"I have cream of _mushroom_. I have _tomato_ …"

"Pizza!"

" _Pizza soup_? You're crazy!"

"Um, listen," Jenna's saying; "I'll just cut to the chase. You should come get Stiles, I think, if you can."

Something cold settles in Derek's chest. He drops the broom. He's already heading back onto the patio for his keys. "What's wrong."

"He's gonna kill me for this," Jenna mutters more or less to herself. Then, "Stiles just passed out."

The cold snaps into fire. "He _what_?"

"I don't think he ate today. He fell down. He's fine now—" 

"I have to go," Derek tells Gladys. "I'm sorry. Can you watch her?"

"Sure," Gladys says, watching him.

"—made him eat a bran muffin," Jenna's going on, meanwhile. "He's got attitude about it. I don't think he finished it. I can't stay with him, and he told me I couldn't call an ambulance, but he didn't even threaten me—"

"I'm coming," Derek tells her, and then hangs up. "Really," he directs at Gladys. "I'm sorry. I'll make it up to you."

"You landscaped my yard," Gladys points out, but Derek's already hurrying through the gate.

::

The book store is pretty busy, crowded with shuffling college students with arms full of battered, used textbooks waiting in line to check out. Jenna, standing at the register, is calling over the mild din, "Line up to the right—to _my_ right, your _left_ —" She sees Derek, and solemnly points toward the back of the store. Derek makes his way through the sea of shelves and morons and slips into the dim back hallway.

It leads left behind the meager café; there are five doors. The two at the very end of the hallway Derek already knows are an electrical closet and a storage room, and ignores these.

First he looks through the little windowed door to the break room. The shitty 20th century fridge is being worked on by a man in blue coveralls, but Stiles is nowhere to be seen. To Derek's perplexion, peering through the glass door to the office also reveals no one but a computer and a series of massive stacks of manila folders.

He tries the bathroom. It smells strongly of floral air freshener and unscented Mop'n'Glo, but it is also very empty.

Derek stands, squinting, for a second, and then shoves the storage closet door open. Of course, there Stiles is, seated on a large cardboard box. His elbows are braced on his knees, head hanging, fingers clasped behind his neck. On another box nearby, there's a half empty water bottle and a disgusting looking bran muffin with a bite out of it. Stiles lifts his head, and then winces at the sight of Derek. He doesn't say anything. He looks like shit, hair messed up, eyes ringed in shadows. Derek feels a swell of anger.

" _Really_?" asks Derek. Stiles flinches at the word. "Stiles, what—"

"I _told_ her not to call you," Stiles groans. He means it as an apology, but of all the things he could have said, Derek doesn't know anything that could piss him off more.

"Why the _hell_ would you do that?" he snaps.

"It's fine, I'm _fine_."

"You're not goddamn fine, Stiles. Jenna told me what you did. You _know_ what that tea shit does to you. You _know_ what Deaton told you."

"It's not a big _deal_."

"Get up. We're leaving." Stiles stares at him, a soundless, aborted _what?_ on his lips. He looks hurt, mystified, and very pale. Something like rage twists in Derek's gut. "If you'd rather I picked you up and _carried_ you out," Derek begins sharply, but Stiles just waves his hands around, a little frantic.

"No, no, no-no-no," he's saying, reaching out and gripping a large box for purchase. "I'm coming. I'll meet you out there."

He's clearly hoping Derek will walk out and wait for him in the car, but he does not. He watches Stiles hoist himself up, and watches him stumble a little, dizzily. Stiles looks at Derek, caught. Derek narrows his eyes.

Derek hovers near him, to make sure he doesn't fall and give himself a concussion, but otherwise they leave the building in silence. The store is a little less busy than when Derek arrived, but not by much. "M'sorry," Stiles directs at Jenna at the register, and she waves this away. Stiles is crumpling up a little bit on the way to the car. "It's not a big deal," Stiles insists to Derek, voice cracking, halfway across the parking lot, and Derek just snorts mirthlessly and ignores him. By the time he's in the car, Stiles has shriveled. Derek gets into the driver's seat and then watches him for a minute or two. He's biting his lip, staring at his hands, clasped tightly in his lap.

The reality of the situation crashes down on Derek very suddenly. As frustrated and worried as Derek has been, it's Stiles who fainted at work. "Stiles?" he tries, gruffly, quietly.

Stiles responds by burying his face in his hands. He's crying. _Shit_. He sobs, almost silent, shoulders shaking, and stays that way for a long time. Derek shuts the engine back off. He stiffly reaches over, puts a hand on Stiles' knee.

Eventually Stiles recedes from sobbing to hiccupping; from that to doing breathing exercises; and finally, sniffling, he seethes in quiet humiliation. Derek waits. He watches Stiles scornfully avoid eye contact. "Sorry," Stiles rasps at length.

There's a long moment of silence. Stiles glances at Derek, and then averts his eyes immediately.

"It's been a weird day," he offers. Like a frustrated little bone thrown at Derek's head.

Another long beat. Stiles sniffs. Calmly, Derek opens the glove compartment. He locates a travel pack of Kleenex, and hands one to Stiles. Stiles scrubs at his face with it.

"I had nightmares," Stiles informs him. "Woke up late."

He cuts his eyes over at Derek again, and again, looks away.

"I ran out of time this morning," he goes on. "Didn't have time to eat. Didn't even have time to sit—to sit with Sam, while he ate breakfast, and he _cried_ , but I had to leave."

He needs another tissue. Derek hands him one.

"Those two things," Stiles says, and then pauses. "Just, it just threw my whole day off. I was distracted and I felt guilty and shitty and these asshole teenagers fucked up the alphabetization in Shakespeare, and then I was complaining to Jenna about it and she goes, she goes all like, _well, you signed up for retail_. Like I'm an _idiot_." The Kleenex is wet, so Stiles wipes under his eye with one sweater sleeve. "So I was, and, my pencil."

Derek passes him a third Kleenex.

"I broke my pencil. It—" Stiles stops to blow his nose. It's an endeavor that requires yet another tissue. "I was writing with it and it just snapped in my hand, and I _lost_ it. Out of _nowhere_. I went in the back and fucking _cried_ over a _fucking pencil_. And I'd been at work for all of two hours." He addresses Derek, looks him in the eye at last. Derek wipes at Stiles' cheek with the pad of his thumb.

Stiles looks away again, shamefully at the crumpled tissues in his lap.

"I was fine after that," he adds, "until, y'know, I fainted like a Victorian maid."

Derek waits some more.

"I'm sorry," Stiles manages. His voice is wavering again. "I won't do it again. I'll, I'll set alarms, on my phone, I—"

"Stiles," says Derek.

"Oh jeez, what," Stiles groans, sagging. "What did I do now? I was _talking_ , I was just—"

"Stop," and he does, gazing miserably out the window. "I was—look at me." He sighs, and then twists back around. "I was pissed off because I was worried about you," Derek tells him somewhat impatiently. "You know that, don't you?"

"Um, _yeah_?" Nope. "I didn't just think you were, like," yes, he did.

"Jenna called and told me you'd _passed out at work_ ," Derek explains. "In the middle of the goddamn day. It scared the _shit_ out of me."

"I _told_ her not to call you," Stiles glooms again.

No. That's even worse. "The thought of you losing consciousness at work and me _not_ knowing about it makes me want to murder someone," Derek points out angrily. "Just the _thought_ of it."

Stiles goes pink in the ears, a softer pink than when he was crying. He fidgets a little. "Um, still," he protests thickly; "I think it's a pretty basic request. Maybe I said it in German or something, what do I know."

"Do you speak German?"

"Nicht wirklich."

"Why didn't you want me to know?" Derek finally asks the question that's been plaguing him since he walked into the fucking storage closet and saw Stiles wince at the sight of him. He was so pissed at the time that he didn't really process it, but in retrospect, Derek realizes that hurt him a little. It cut him. It stung.

"Because it's _not_ _a big_ _deal_ ," whines Stiles for about the seventy-fifth time. "All right? Like, in the _grand scheme_ of Stiles' antics—"

"Bullshit," Derek's interrupting. "If it weren't a big deal, I'd have heard about it _immediately_. It would have been on _Twitter_. All right? There is _no world_ where knowing you have a _rock_ in your shoe, but _not_ knowing you're having a _medical crisis_ —"

"Oh, my _god_ —"

"—is acceptable marital behavior. Just the _idea_ —"

" _Jesus_ ," stresses Stiles, "what did she _tell_ you? I saw spots and sat down, I didn't, like, contract leprosy, or have a _stro_ —"

"Stop _downplaying_ this!" Derek raises his voice. Stiles grinds the heels of his palms into his eye sockets. "Be honest with me," he continues, "for _once_ in your life. What is so horrible about me picking you up and taking you to the Red goddamn Robin?"

Meekly, into his palms: "Is that where we're going?"

"Not if you don't tell me why you specifically don't want me to know about this."

"Because you'd be mad," Stiles finally tells him hoarsely, dropping his hands. "Okay? We're having a _college kid rush_ and Jenna's in there by herself and you're _mad_ and you think I'm a moron and I'm wasting your goddamn time. God," he grits his teeth, eyes welling up again, "let me drop _everything_ I'm doing because my _dumbass husband_ can't figure out _eating_."

"I don't think you can't figure out eating," Derek says flatly. "You've never had a problem with eating."

"Great," says Stiles, smirking. It doesn't quite meet his eyes. "I'll take that as a compliment, I guess." He would. He shudders into compliments like a hypothermic man into a stolen blanket.

"I'm sorry for acting like a dick." Stiles sighs, and nods wordlessly. Forgiveness. "The only time you think of yourself anymore," Derek adds, "is when you're berating yourself for fucking up. And," he grabs Stiles' chin and wrenches his head around to force eye contact, "I dropped what I was doing because, for the billionth time, I love you, you idiot. Like I would keep swiffering the bathroom when I think you're in trouble."

"You haven't said that a billion times."

"I love you."

"There it is," says Stiles, smirking crookedly, " _that's_ a billion."

"Please take better care of yourself," Derek stresses. "You look like shit."

"The romance is real."

"Shut up."

"No, for real, I'm getting the vapors…" 

"Shut _up_. What have you eaten today, coffee?"

"No. I had two grape TicTacs at around nine."

"You're disgusting," Derek reminds him, to a somewhat amicable nod, "and TicTacs have no nutritional value."

"This is the worst after school special I've ever seen," announces Stiles dully. "Worse than the Alvin and the Chipmunks anti-drug one."

"That would have aired significantly before you were born," Derek tells him. "Stop that."

"It's a classic."

"Shut up."

"Uncultured _swine_."

"Shut. Up. Are you still dizzy? Don't lie to me. You know I'll know."

Stiles sighs heavily. "Yeah. A little… woozy, I guess. I just need some sugar…"

"Then put your goddamn seatbelt on."

Instead of putting his seatbelt on, Stiles tips himself into Derek's chest. The console is between them, and Derek doesn't think human bodies were designed to be twisted this way, but all the same, he holds Stiles in silence for a long time. And loath as he is to admit it, Derek is more than glad to do it. He breathes in Stiles' hair and gets a lot of stress and book dust. Softly, sort of desperately, Stiles says, "Say it again."

"Put your seatbelt on." Stiles chuckles wetly. "I love you."

Stiles sighs. "Okay."

He's not buying it, but Derek doesn't know how to sell it. He can't fight this. He rests his forehead against the side of Stiles' head.

After a long time, Stiles asks, hoarse, "Were you really swiffering the bathroom?"

"This morning," says Derek. "Not when Jenna called. Listen." Stiles looks up at him. "Put your _fucking_ _seatbelt_ on."

Smiling a little, Stiles does.

::

At the restaurant, a server named Amanda brings them a second basket of steak fries. Derek, beside Stiles and with an arm across the booth behind him, snatches it up and plunks it down directly in front of Stiles. "Eat," he says. "Now."

"How very cro-magnon of you," Stiles appraises, but he stuffs a fry into his cheek. "Listen," he adds then, muffled and soft-edged because his mouth is full. He's disgusting. "This is, this is the stuff. Right?"

Derek has no idea what he's talking about. He chooses willful ignorance: "I can't understand you when you're displaying a mouthful of chewed food…"

"I'm not normally," Stiles insists, ignoring Derek's admonishment, "all weepy and forgetful and shit. Right? I mean…"

"You're a little weepy," says Derek. Stiles rolls his eyes. "And you're kind of forgetful."

"My _point_ is," he says a little sharply, for emphasis, "don't think, like… there's some… _underlying thing_ going on here."

Derek side-eyes him skeptically. He doesn't argue, but he doesn't bother trying to disguise the dubious tone in his "Uh huh."

"I'm serious." Derek snaps his fingers and points at the fries. Stiles selects and bites into one. "This is a _one-time thing_ , all right, and if you start fussing over me on the regular, we're gonna have a problem."

" _Honey_ ," says Derek irritably, and Stiles drops his head back. He means it to be an angry gesture, but Derek's arm is there. "If you keep forgetting to _eat_ and _sleep_ , I won't have a _choice_ —"

"I swear to _god_ , Derek—"

The server reappears, as servers have the misfortune of managing to do in the middle of every conversation, laden with plates. "All righty _dighty_ ," she says. Stiles shoves three fries into his mouth at once, probably to gag himself so he's not mean to her. "Mushroom and swiss, side of fruit, side of mashed potatoes. Grilled chicken on ciabatta. Yum! Anything else I can get for you?"

"Phloomph," Stiles answers darkly.

"Okey dokey! Don't forget: my name's Amanda!"

"I want Amanda to stay away from me," Stiles mutters, once he's swallowed and she's departed. "For her sake and mine. Look," he says to Derek. "I'm an adult. I know when I'm being crazy. I just—" Derek narrows his eyes at Stiles' plate, looks aggressively back and forth between it and Stiles' face, which isn't eating currently. "Oh my god," says Stiles. He takes a huge bite of the burger and swallows it practically whole. "Happy? Shit." He coughs, taps the side of his fist against his sternum. Moron. "It's the _stuff_ , it's Deaton's new stuff, and I just need to get used to it. Okay? He said I needed to get _acclimated_."

 _This is strike two_ , Derek doesn't threaten. "You weren't even this irrational when you were _actually_ …" Derek gestures at Stiles' stomach. He hates saying the word _pregnant_ ; it just brings reality crashing down around him and makes him incredibly self conscious. Like someone somewhere will leave a rude comment on his life.

"Right. Well, sorry," says Stiles, genuinely unconcerned. He takes another bite. "Mm—holy shit. _Mushrooms_. Holy _shit_. Do you ever—" He has to pause to chew. "Do you ever not know you were craving something until you had it?"

Derek stares at Stiles for a while, watches him eat, the flush in his cheeks and his messy hair. On the table, Stiles' phone screen lights up with a text from his new friend, Imani; his lock screen is of the kids.  Sighing, Derek returns to his meal. 

::

That weekend, little Vernon spends the night. Stiles sets him and his own children up in sleeping bags on the floor in Sam's bedroom. He was worried they'd be up shrieking all night, but Sam's already half asleep, and Verny's a lowkey, schedule-oriented kind of kid; he wants to pursue his typical nightly routine, even in someone else's house. Stiles reads them a book ("Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus"), and then sits on the floor by their heads, because Vernon has some questions, none of them related to the story. "Why, um, um, wh—why is the, do the cars go?"

"They have engines," Stiles tells him.

"Why do _engines_ go?"

"They make little fires in them that heat up and make the car go."

"That's why only cops touch them."

"Well, uh. Hm. Mechanics. Only mechanics."

"Yeah. How come—how come, um, how come trees grow up? Not down?" 

"They like the sun."

"I like the sun."

"You do? Me too."

"Why the moon lights up?" 

"The sun shines on it. If you go into space, Earth lights up too. One more question, and then it's bedtime."

Vernon accepts this limitation. He considers carefully his next query. Finally, he asks, "Where do babies come from?"

Uh oh. A minefield. Stiles is unfazed: without a moment's pause, he says, "Grown-ups."

Vernon rolls happily over to go to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a real book, and it's hilarious.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [well I'm lookin' for a dream on a mean machine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/891864) by [HalfFizzbin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HalfFizzbin/pseuds/HalfFizzbin)




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